9

MICROCOSM
108

45

9
9

MACROCOSM
100

37

1

 

5

MICRO
58

31

4
5

MACRO
50

23

5
10

108

54

9
1+0

1+0+8

5+4

1

9

9

9

 

11

SERENDIPITY
144

63

9
6

CHANCE
34

25

7
11

COINCIDENCE
84

57

3
28

262

145

19
2+8

2+6+2

1+4+5

1+9
10

10

10

10
1+0

1+0

1+0

1+0
1

1

1

1

11

SERENDIPITY
144

63

9
6

CHANCE
34

25

7
11

COINCIDENCE
84

57

3

3

SUN
54

9

9
5

EARTH
52

25

7
4

MOON
57

21

3

3

SUN

54

9

9

5

EARTH

52

25

7

4

MOON

57

21

3

12

163

55

19

1+2

1+6+3

5+5

1+9

3

10

10

10

1+0

1+0

1+0

3

1

1

1

 

153 x 12

ISISIS

?????????

 

A

ROLLING TONE CARRIES NO MASS 

 

 

 

THE LOST WORLDS OF 2001

Arthur C. Clarke

1972

FOREWORD

 

"Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts; for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth."

 

"So began the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey when it was published in July 1968. But the first version, four years earlier, had started like this...

Page 15

The plain was covered with large, spherical boulders, and the robot was rolling straight toward one. Its builders were not worried; the machine's obstacle-detecting skirt would warn it before there was danger of collision, and it would automatically turn off at a right angle. That was the theory; what happened was somewhat different.

Before the robot could reach it, the boulder moved. It heaved itself off the ground on a myriad stumpy legs, crawled slowly out of the track of the advancing explorer, and settled down again. As it plunged forward, unaware of the consternation it was causing on Earth and Mars, the robot disturbed two more of the boulders; then it was through them, and encountered no others until, ten hours later, it became trapped in a canyon and continued to radio back maddeningly repetitious views of bare rock until its batteries failed.

But it had done its work; it had detected life on Mars - life, moreover, of a fairly advanced form. Whether animal, vegetable, or neither, was a question that would not be answered for years-until the first expedition reached the planet in the mid-80's.

The early explorers knew that they would find life: they could only hope that they would find intelligence. But Mars has as much land area as Earth-for though it is a small world, it has no seas. Even to map the planet adequately would take decades; to learn all its secrets would be the work of centuries.

The main Martian life-forms-the "roving stones" browsing on the mineral deserts, the leechlike predators that hunted them in the desperate battle for existence, the yet fiercer parasites that preyed on them-showed only the dimmest flickers of intelligence. Nor was there any sign that these were the degenerate survivors of superior creatures; Mars, it appeared certain, had never been the home of Mind. Yet there were still many who hoped that, somewhere in the endless crimson deserts, or beneath the frozen poles, or sealed in the eroded hills, there might yet be found the relics of civilizations that had flourished when the giant reptiles ruled the Earth. It was a romantic dream, and it would be slow to die."

 

MIN DOTH DREAM WHAT DOTH MIN MEAN 

 

THE

PHILOSOPHERS

TONE

 
14

CUBO-OCTAHEDRON
144

63

9
11

SERENDIPITY
144

63

9

 

HARMONIC 288

Bruce Cathie

EIGHT

Page

80

THE MEASURE OF LIGHT

" THE OBELISK RISING majestically from the sandswept plain has been visible to man for many centuries. Its massive bulk and geometric simplicity of shape have caused wonder and endless speculation to countless generations of wise men throughout history. The meaning, or reason, for such a structure has been lost and those responsible for the building of an edifice such as this must have been in possession of extremely advanced scientific knowledge. Were they an advanced race of this world who destroyed themselves by unwise manipulation of their own scientific achievement? Or, so-called gods? Or, people from other worlds who left amongst us an almost indestructible repository of advanced knowledge in the mathematical com-plexities of the universe?

The obelisk I speak of is not the cold, black, forbidding obelisk depicted in Stanley Kubrick's movie 2001, but a pyramid of shining splendour built on a rocky mile-square plateau ten miles west of Cairo, The plateau is known as Giza; the pyramidal structure of an estimated two-and-a-half million blocks of granite and limestone, is the

"Great Pyramid of Cheops",

 

 

8
H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

8
1
18
13
15
14
9
3
+
=
81
8+1
=
9
NINE
9

H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

THE UPSIDE DOWN OF THE DOWNSIDE UP

 

 

8
H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

8
1
18
13
15
14
9
3
+
=
81
8+1
=
9
NINE
9

8
1
9
4
6
5
9
3
+
=
45
4+5
=
9
NINE
9

H
A
R
M
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N
I
C

 

 

HINOSXZZXSONIH

 
H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

8

9

+
=
17

1+7
=
8

8
EIGHT
8

H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

6
5

11
1+1
=
2

2
TWO
2

1+5
1+4

8

15
14
9

+
=
46
4+6
=
10
1+0
=
1
ONE
1
8
H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

8
1
18
13
15
14
9
3
+
=
81
8+1
=
9

9
NINE
9

1+8
1+3
1+5
1+4

9
4
6
5

+
=
24
2+4
=
6

6
SIX
6

8
1

9
3
+
=
21
2+1
=
3

3
THREE
3

8
1
9
4
6
5
9
3
+
=
45
4+5
=
9

9
NINE
9

H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

 

HEAR

ME

EIGHT ONE ONE EIGHT

8 . . . . . . . . .1 . . . . . . . .1 . . . . . . . . 8

ONE EIGHT EIGHT ONE

1 . . . . . . . . . 8 . . . . . . . . . 8 . . . . . . . . . 1

PARADISE

PARADE EYES EYES PARADE

 

 EYES PARADE ISIS

 

 

8
H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

8
1
18
13
15
14
9
3
+
=
81
8+1
=
9
NINE
9

8
1
9
4
6
5
9
3
+
=
45
4+5
=
9
NINE
9

H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

1

1

1
ONE
1

3

3

3

THREE
3

4

4

4
FOUR
4

5

5

5
FIVE
5

6

6

6
SIX
6

8

8

8
EIGHT
8

9

9

18
1+8
=
9
NINE
9

H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

 

 
H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

9

9
NINE
9

8

8
EIGHT
8

6

6
XIS
6

5

5
FIVE
5
8
H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

8
1
9
4
6
5
9
3
+
=
45
4+5
=
9
NINE
9

H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

1

1

1
ONE
1

3

3

3

THREE
3

4

4

4
FOUR
4

5

5

5
FIVE
5

6

6

6
SIX
6

8

8

8
EIGHT
8

9

9

18
1+8
=
9
NINE
9

H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

 

 
H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

9

9
NINE
9

8

8
EIGHT
8

6

6
XIS
6

5

5
FIVE
5

1

1

1
ONE
1

3

3

3

THREE
3

4

4

4
FOUR
4

9

9

9
NINE
9

H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

 

 
H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

9

9

+
=
9
NINE
9

8

8
EIGHT
8

6

6
XIS
6

5

5
FIVE
5

4

4
FOUR
4

3

3

THREE
3

1

1
ONE
1

H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

 

 
H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

5

5
FIVE
5

6

6
XIS
6

8

8
EIGHT
8

9

9
NINE
9
8
H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

8
1
9
4
6
5
9
3

H
A
R
M
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I
C

9

9
NINE
9

4

4
FOUR
4

3

3
THREE
3

1

1
ONE
1

H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

 

 
H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

8

6
5
9

+
=
28

2+8
10
1+0
=
1

ONE
1

8

15
14
9

+
=
46
4+6
10

1+0
=
1

ONE
1
8
H
A
R
M
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N
I
C

1
18
13

3
+
=
35
3+5
8

8
8
EIGHT
8

1
9
4

3
+
=
17

1+7

8
8
EIGHT
8

H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

 

 
H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

8

6
5
9

+
=
28

2+8
10
1+0
=
1
1
ONE
1
8
H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

1
9
4

3
+
=
17

1+7
8

8
8
EIGHT
8

H
A
R
M
O
N
I
C

 

HARMONIC 288

Bruce Cathie

EIGHT

Page

80

THE MEASURE OF LIGHT

 Page 80

THE MEASURE OF LIGHT

" THE OBELISK RISING majestically from the sandswept plain has been visible to man for many centuries. Its massive bulk and geometric simplicity of shape have caused wonder and endless speculation to countless generations of wise men throughout history. The meaning, or reason, for such a structure has been lost and those responsible for the building of an edifice such as this must have been in possession of extremely advanced scientific knowledge. Were they an advanced race of this world who destroyed themselves by unwise manipulation of their own scientific achievement? Or, so-called gods? Or, people from other worlds who left amongst us an almost indestructible repository of advanced knowledge in the mathematical com-plexities of the universe?

The obelisk I speak of is not the cold, black, forbidding obelisk depicted in Stanley Kubrick's movie 2001, but a pyramid of shining splendour built on a rocky mile-square plateau ten miles west of Cairo, The plateau is known as Giza; the pyramidal structure of an estimated two-and-a-half million blocks of granite and limestone, is the "Great Pyramid of Cheops".

Rising nearly 500 feet from the desert the mountain of granite was faced with polished limestone and must have presented a dazzling spectacle when sighted from the.surrounding country- side, E~timates of the age of the pyramid vary from 5000 to 7300 years.

The base covers an area just on thirteen acres and the granite building blocks are of enormous size varying from three to ninety tons each, with several weighing as much as 600 tons, The completed pyramid is estimated to have weighed in the vicinity of six and a half million tons.

During construction the giant blocks were placed with extreme accuracy. It is almost impossible to detect the joins / Page 81 / between blocks of up to 100 tons. The whole structure is put together with far more precision than a Swiss watch, considering the size of the project, and not one construction company in the world today would dare to attempt such a colossal task. If they did, it would be a very poor copy and would probably collapse into a heap of rubble in a very short time from its own sheer weight.

The logistics of the enterprise would also be impossible to contend with. It has been estimated that at a building rate of ten blocks a day, the time taken to build a copy would be 250,000 days, or 684 years. That is, assuming that modern builders could manhandle blocks of this size.

A little thought will make it obvious that the Cheops pyramid and al~similar edifices were not built by normal means. Some of the 70-ton blocks of red granite were transported from quarries which are 600 miles from Giza. The usual explanation that hundreds of slaves carted these across the desert using wooden rollers and raffia ropes is ridiculous. Consider: the number of trees necessary to make rollers to transport 2,500,000 blocks; the tons of raffia necessary to twist into miles of rope; the accommodation, housing and feeding problems of the slave labour employed.

There is only one answer to the riddle of such construction methods: antigravity. Only by this means could the large blocks be moved over great distances and placed so accurately. The time factor of the building programme would also have been reduced drastically by diminishing the weight of the blocks during their movement from quarry to pyramid.

Another problem to be overcome was the cutting and dressing of the blocks. Can you imagine hundreds of slaves cutting 70- to 600 ton blocks of solid granite out of deep quarries with primi-tive tools; then lifting them out without machinery; then squaring and dressing the surfaces to a mirror finish with a hammer and chisel; then loping off across the desert, on occasion for 600 miles, to -dump them in a stockpile at the base of the pyramid?

The blocks are so finely dressed that I would suggest that the method of cutting was by use of laser beam. The laser (or amplified light beam) would be harmonically tuned to create a beam of light that was selective to granite only. I believe that a / Page 82 / laser can be constructed so that it is harmonically tuned to the frequency rate of any type of matter.

The pyramid-builders were not primitive people. The designers were scientists of extremely high intellect and the work was carried out by highly-skilled craftsmen using methods far more advanced than are known today. The reason for construction was also far from the mundane one of providing a tomb for the odd Pharaoh. A Pharaoh would have to be odd to tie up so much manpower resources and wealth in such a project merely to have his remains stored in a gigantic stone box.

My research has led me to believe that the Great Pyramid, particularly, was constructed for a definite scientific purpose. The exact purpose is not yet clear, although the mathematics show that the fundamental measurement throughout the struc-ture is based on the harmonic frequency of light. Calculations also indicate that the passageways and chambers have been engineered in such a way as to form wave guides and cavity resonators which are tuned to light, mass and gravitational frequencies. What could be the meaning of this? A cosmic telephone box, a matter-transmitter, a powerhouse? Much research will have to be carried out to find the answer but I believe, at least, that the code of the construction has been cracked.

I was recently sent a copy of an article from the 23 August 1972 issue of the Toronto Star. This concerns the theories expounded on the structure of pyramids by Eric McLuhan, son of Marshall McLuhan and an electronics specialist at St Michael's College, which appear to agree with what I have found by calculation. The article describes Eric as an "intellectual gymnast who effortlessly straddles several academic disciplines at once and feels as comfortable exploring wave mechanics or nuclear physics as he does the work of the French symbolist poets. He is outrageous, arrogant, brilliant, and one minute you decide he is a genius or the next that he has slipped slightly round the bend."

McLuhan says that "pyramids do something. They are not just glorified tombstones, as many of the early pyramids show no evidence of burial. A cardboard pyramid of the right dimensions-the same dimensions as the Great Pyramid of Cheops-is capable of sharpening a dull razor blade placed / Page 83 / inside it, or of dehydrating meat. Researchers in Czechoslovakia, France, the USA and elsewhere have satisfied themselves that the pyramid's shape, in some way that we don't understand, acts as a device for manipulating forms of energy that modem science hasn't yet defined. But how?"

When McLuhan saw a photograph of 1he bent pyramid at Danshur, he considered it to be a two-frequency octahedron and the fact that Egyptian priests in ancient times had used the same geometric concept set him thinking. He says "the reason the pyramids have remained an enigma is the separation between disciplines. If an archaeologist knows nothing about electronics, he is not likely to see that the pyramids were tools; a sophisti- cated piece of technology."

To test his theories he farmed out several experimental pyramids to scientists in Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa. One is dehydrating food, one. is sharpening razorblades, and in a third they're experimenting with semiconductors-the crystalline electronic components that are the basic building-blocks of modem miniaturised electronics. McLuhan speculates that the semiconductors grown inside the pyramid could be the most efficient ever known because they have been grown in a magnet-ically pure environment.

He theorises that as the transistor manipulates electrons, so the pyramid can focus, or deploy, the forces of magnetism and gravity. The dehydration and edge-sharpening effects are explained in terms of wave mechanics. Oxygen atoms behave differently inside different magnetic fields. Magnetism can affect the way they bond with, or dissociate from, other elements. Since the razor's edge is composed of metal oxides, and since oxygen atoms depart during the dehydration process, McLuhan suspects that a coherent magnetic field inside the pyramid may be the explanation. "The pyramid is a resonating cavity," he says, "just like a trumpet, a cyclotron or a hi-fi speaker."

Another interesting article which points to the fact that the pyramid shape sets up some type of electromagnetic or gravita-tional force was published by the London Times on 14 July 1969. The article written by John Tunstall says, in part:

Scientists who have been trying to X-ray the pyramid of Chephren at Giza, near Cairo are baffled by mysterious influences that are throwing into utter confusion the readings / Page 84 / of their space-age electronic equipment. For twenty-four hours a day for more than a year, in the hopes of finding secret chambers thought to exist within the six-million-ton mass of the pyramid, they have been recording on magnetic tape the pattern of cosmic rays reaching the interior.

The idea is that as the rays strike the pyramid uniformly from all directions, they should, if the pyramid is solid, be recorded uniformly by a detector in the chamber at the bottom.

But if there were-vaults above the detector, they would let more rays through than the solid areas, thereby revealing their existence. More than one million dollars and thousands of man hours have been spent on the project, which was expected to reach a climax a few months ago when the latest IBM 1120 computer was delivered to Ein Shams university near Cairo.

At Ein Shams, Dr Amr Gohed, in charge of the installation at the pyramid, showed me the new IBM 1120 computer sur-rounded by hundreds of tins of recordings from the pyramid, stacked up in date order. Though hesitant at first, he told me of the impasse that had been reached.

"It defies all the known laws of science and electronics," he said, picking up a tin of recordings. He put the tape through the computer which traced the pattern of cosmic ray particles on paper. He then selected a recording made the next day and put it through the computer. But the recorded pattern was completely different.

"This is scientifically impossible," he told me. . . .

I asked Dr Gohed, "Has this scientific knowhow been rendered useless by some forces beyond man's comprehen- sion?"

He hesitated before replying, then said: "Either the geo-metry of tpe pyramid is in substantial error, which would affect our readings, or there is a mystery which is beyond explanation-call it what you will-occultism, the curse of the Pharaohs, sorcery, or magic-there is some force that defies the laws of science at work in the pyramids r'

This particular research project was sponsored by the US Atomic Energy Commission, the Smithsonian Institute, and the Ein Shams University in Cairo.

It is obvious that knowledge of vast importance to mankind is / Page 85 / locked up in the secrets of the pyramids and the very word pyramid should give us the first clue, The literal meaning is "fire in the middle", On page 86 of The Great Pyramid-Its Divine Message, by D. Davidson and H. Aldersmith, another deriva-tion of the word is given: pyramid is the Grecianised form of the Hebrew urrim-middin-"light measures". The Egyptian name for the Great Pyramid is Khuti-"the Lights". In the Semitic languages the equivalent name is urim-"the Lights". In Phrygian and Greek, the root ur (light) became successively pur and pyr (fire) and pyra (plural), "beacon fires".

In Chaldee and Hebrew middin equals "measures". Hence the Chaldee-Hebrew name for the Great Pyramid-in Egyptian Khuti, "the Lights", is Urim-middin (purim-middin) or "lights- measures".

I found some more interesting facts in a, pamphlet written in 1972 by a Mr G. Patrick Flanagan, Ph.D., on "The Pyramid and its Relationship to Biocosmic Energy", Mr Flanagan was cited in two pages for his scientific and inventive genius, some years ago, in a Life magazine article which named 100 of the most important young people in the United States in govern-ment, science, space, business, education, religion and the arts. They were called "the takeover generation".

Mr Flanagan states that the Great Pyramid of Giza is a powerful source of biocosmic energy, He calls this particular field of science Magnetic Form Resonance and says that his research results confirm that the energy is of a special magnetic nature-the forces that bind the universe together. Energies of microcosmic levels may be tuned in with microcosmic devices such as the pyramid., "The pyramid generates millimicrowave or nanowave radiation by the simple fact that it has five corners - the four base corners plus the apex, The corners are in effect a type of nanowave radiator, The radiation from the molecules or the atoms of matter in the pyramid combine by the angles of the corners into a beam which bisects the angles and transmits a beam of this radiation towards the centre of the pyramid. The molecules or atoms of this area absorb these energies by reson- ance.As the energy increases, the electron orbits start to expand. As more energy is absorbed more expansion occurs, There would be a point at which, if there were too much energy absorbed, the atoms would disintegrate, and the electrons / Page 86 / would fly off, but the energy required for this would be far more than the pyramid could concentrate. As the energy increases there is an increase in circulation and finally there is a highly saturated energy atmosphere in the wave bands around 10 nanometers. The energy would also radiate outwards from the corners of the pyramid."

A further interesting comment was found in the preface to the third edition of Davidson and Aldersmith's book on the Great Pyramid. The religious symbolism of the displacement factor (the "hollowing-in" of the sides of the pyramid during construc-tion) was discussed as follows: "This aspect of the structural allegory throws a flood of light upon an element of the scriptural allegory that clearly refers to the completion of 'all the building'

. . . 'unto the measure of the fullness of the stature', required by the design. This concerns the symbolic '144000 . . . redeemed from among men. . . without fault before the throne of God'

(Rev XIV, 1-=5); 'Living stones' . . . without flaw for the perfect casing."

It is the symbolic 144000 that appears to have great signifi-cance in the ancient writings and it is interesting to note that this particular value has been connected in some way by other researchers to the enigma of the Great Pyramid. Considering that the angular velocity of light value in grid seconds is also 144000, as postulated in other sections of this book, it is obvious to me that the structure is in fact a measure of light, and by applying this value it should be possible to solve the mathemati-cal puzzle which has been handed down to us.

After studying all this information, and volumes of other writ-ings on the Great Pyramid, I felt I was at the stage where, by careful analysis, a complete breakdown of the structure could possibly be achieved in terms of light, gravity and mass har- monics. I finally succeeded in accomplishing what I set out to do after a few weeks of work on a twelve-digit electronic calculator, although the approach to the problem was not, as straight- forward as I had expected it to be. I present the solution as a purely theoretical one at this stage as I obviously cannot check the original structure to proye that my values are the correct ones. Hopefully, a very thorough scientific check will be carried out in the future by the Arab states.

 

Page 95

" The Measure of Light

The volume enclosed by the Pyramid, had it been constructed on the full square base, would have been 94,478,400 cubic feet in geodetic measure. The fact that the base sides were hollowed in suggested to me that the actual mass of the Pyramid had been engineered in such a way as to cause the whole structure to be harmonically tuned to some basic value connected with matter itself.

The search for this particular value was a lengthy one and the clue that led me finally to a possible solution was a study of the construction of the Grand Gallery. The height of the Gallery was the first indication that it was not just an elaborate access passage. Previous measurements made by scientific investigators pointed to some interesting possibilities. Slight buckling caused by the massive weight of the Pyramid above, settling over thousands of years, has now resulted in the ceiling of the cham-ber having an uneven surface. The present mean height was found to be 339.2 British inches, while heights taken at various individual points were 333,9 to 346 inches.

Equating the results I had obtained from all the other aspects of the structure, I am certain that the original height of the chamber was 345.6 geodetic inches, which gives a value of 28.8 feet. The height of the chamber was obviously equivalent to the harmonic of 288, or twice the speed of light, If it was in fact a cavity resonator, as I now suspected, then the length and all the other measurements should show indications of harmonics.

The value that I calculated for length was extremely close to that of the one published in Davidson and Aldersmith's book, their value being 1836 inches, and my theoretical value 1833.46 geodetic inches.

A considerable amount of time was required to calculate a satisfactory value for the length of the Gallery. I eventually found that the amount of hollowing-in at the base provided the clue. If 57.6 (the amount in inches by which the base is inset) is I divided by pi or 3.1415927, the resulting value is 18.334649. The harmonic equivalent of 1833.46 when applied to Gallery length would ensure that the wave - forms set up in the cavity were finely tuned to light frequencies.

A search of my physics books revealed that 1836 was the closest approximation the scientists have calculated to the mass / Page 96 (Diagram omitted)) / Page 97 / ratio of the positive hydrogen ion, i.e. the proton, to the electron. tf we dare to assume that the value, of 1833.46 is the true geometric ratio then the wave-forms in the Gallery will also have a harmonic affinity with the structure of the atom, the building block of the universe itself. Pressing on with this train of thought I again consulted a book on atomic physics and found that the mass of the electron is given as 9.2 x 10-31 kilo- grammes. I believe that, according to the clues presented by the Pyramid, the true value of electron mass, in the harmonic sense, could be taken as a standard of 9.24184 x 10-31 kilo- grammes.

If this harmonic mass value is multiplied by 1833.46, the proposed mass ratio of the proton and electron, we have

9.24184 '>< 1833.46 = 16944.5

This appears perfectly logical to me, as a value of 16944 for the proton mass harmonic would lay the basis for a complete harmonic scale for the atomic table of elements. This !:Ias been demonstrated in .another chapter.

I can almost hear the shouts of anguish from the scientific community, so I hasten to add that I set up these proposals only for discussion and experiment. I am sure that natural law is not a haphazard affair and that harmony is maintained throughout all physical processes.

The recess in the floor at the bottom end of the Gallery over the access passage to the Queen's Chamber also indicates a connec- tion with the harmonic of light frequency. The length of the recess is given as 2Q3.8 British inches in A;ldersmith and Dayid- son's book. I believe that a very accurate check will show that this recess is 263.523 geodetic inches, which would equal'the square root of the harmonic of the reciprocal of light, which is 694444. Investigators have been intrigued by the strange reson- ances in the chamber from any sounds made within it. Other measurements I have checked indicate a harmonic association with time. A complete book would be necessary to explore all the mathematical complexities of the passages and chambers to demonstrate how the structure has been engineered to produce harmonic wave-forms tuned to all the natural laws. I point out only a few of them to indicate the goldmine of information / Page 99 / awaiting those who would carry out more extensive research.

Davidson and Aldersmith go to great lengths in their book to refute the idea that the Pyramid was constructed as a tomb and that it was built to serve some other purpose."

ATUM A TOMB ATOM

"The direct proof against a tombic theory is an engineering proof, and a definitely convincing engineering proof. The first ascending passage which leads from the entrance or descend- ing passage into all the inner passages and chambers of the Pyramid, was, and is, closed by a tightly fitting granite plug or block at its lower or entering end. According to the exponents of the tombic theory, this plug was retained loose in the Grand Gallery or elsewhere in the Pyramid's upper. system, until the death of the king. The mummy case, it is alleged, was then dragged up the ascending passages and deposited in the King's Chamber; after which the granite plug was released and permitted to slide down from the Grand Gallery into the first ascending passage to its lower end. Here according to the theory it came to rest, tightly wedged in, impossible to remove except by quarrying. In this position it effectively sealed access to the upper passages and chambers. There the plug still remains, sealing the access, and entrance to the first ascending? passage behind the plug is gained only by means of Al Mamoun's quarried shaft, which was excavated about AD 800.now the peculiar fact concerning this plug is that it would fit just as tightly the depth of the upper end of the passage as it does the lower. Any engineer, architect or constructional operative knows that it is impossible to slide or push a block of stone, however smoothly dressed and accurately squared,- a long a passage , after the passage has been completely con-structed, if the block fits the passage tightly. It is a matter of experience in such circumstances that the block will jam in the passage unless it has at least three quarters of an inch clear- ance all round. . . It is therefore obvious that the first ascending passage was plugged as soon as the building of it began. . . . From this it is certain that the first ascending passage and the upper passages and chambers were not intended for any contemporary purpose, that they were not intended for the transit and reception of the royal or any other mummy, and that the Great Pyramid was not built as a tomb."

 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI

Paramahansa Yogananda

1946

Page 274 / 5

The Law of Miracles

Through the divine eye in the / forehead (east), the yogi sails his consciousness into omni- presence, hearing the Word or Aum, divine sound of "many waters": the vibrations of light that constitute the sole reality of creation.

Among the trillion mysteries of the cosmos, the most phenomenal is light. Unlike sound waves, whose transmission requires air or other material media, light waves pass freely through the vacuum of interstellar space. Even the hypotheti- cal ether, held as the interplanetary medium of light in the undulatory theory, may be discarded on the Einsteinian grounds that the geometrical properties of space render un- necessary a theory of ether. Under either hypothesis, light remains the most subtle, the freest from material dependence, of any natural manifestation.

In the gigantic conceptions of Einstein, the velocity of light - 186,300 miles per second - dominates the whole Theory of Relativity. He proves mathematically that the ve-locity of light is, so far as man's finite mind is concerned, the only constant of a universe in flux. On the sole "abso-lute" of light velocity depend all human standards of time and space. Not abstractly eternal as hitherto considered, time and space are relative and finite factors. They derive their conditional measurement-validities only in reference to the yardstick of light velocity.

In joining space as a dimensional relativity, time is now stripped to its rightful nature: a simple essence of ambiguity. With a few equational strokes of his pen, Einstein banished from the universe every fixed reality except that of light.

In a later development, his Unified Field Theory, the great physicist embodies in one mathematical formula the laws of gravitation and of electromagnetism. Reducing the cosmical structure to variations on a single law, Einstein has reached across the ages to the rishis who proclaimed a sole fabric of creation: a protean maya.

On the epochal Theory of Relativity have arisen the mathematical possibilities of exploring the ultimate atom. Great scientists are now boldly asserting not only that the atom is energy rather than matter, but that atomic energy is essentially mind-stuff.

 

1836 MINOS 1863

1863 + 1836

 153 x 12

 

THE JUPITER EFFECT

John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann

1977

Page 122

"Seventeen 'major historical earthquakes' are referred to in the report all of which occurred since

1836"

 

 

 

HARMONIC 288

Bruce Cathie

1977

EIGHT

THE MEASURE OF LIGHT

Page 95

"The search for this particular value was a lengthy one and the clue that led me finally to a possible solution was a study of the construction of the Grand Gallery. The height of the Gallery was the first indication that it was not just an elaborate access passage. Previous measurements made by scientific investigators pointed to some interesting possibilities."

Page 95

"The value that I calculated for length was extremely close to that of the one published in Davidson and Aldersmith's book, their value being 1836 inches,"

Page 95/97

"A search of my physics books revealed that 1836 was the closest approximation the scientists have calculated to the mass / ratio of the positive hydrogen ion, i.e. the proton, to the electron."

 

 

JUST SIX NUMBERS

Martin Rees

1

999

OUR COSMIC HABITAT I PLANETS STARS AND LIFE

Page 24

"A proton is 1,836 times heavier than an electron, and the number 1,836 would have the same connotations to any 'intelligence' "

Page 24 / 25

"A manifestly artificial signal- even if it were as boring as lists of prime numbers, or the digits of 'pi' - would imply that 'intelli- gence' wasn't unique to the Earth and had evolved elsewhere. The nearest potential sites are so far away that signals would take many years in transit. For this reason alone, transmission would be primarily one-way. There would be time to send a measured response, but no scope for quick repartee!

Any remote beings who could communicate with us would have some concepts of mathematics and logic that paralleled our own. And they would also share a knowledge of the basic particles and forces that govern our universe. Their habitat may be very different (and the biosphere even more different) from ours here on Earth; but they, and their planet, would be made of atoms just like those on Earth. For them, as for us, the most important particles would be protons and electrons: one electron orbiting a proton makes a hydrogen atom, and electric currents and radio transmitters involve streams of electrons. A proton is 1,836 times heavier than an electron, and the number 1,836 would have the same connotations to any 'intelligence' able and motivated to transmit radio signals. All the basic forces and natural laws would be the same. Indeed, this uniformity - without which our universe would be a far more baffling place - seems to extend to the remotest galaxies that astronomers can study. (Later chapters in this book will, however, speculate about other 'universes', forever beyond range of our telescopes, where different laws may prevail.)

Clearly, alien beings wouldn't use metres, kilograms or seconds. But we could exchange information about the ratios of two masses (such as thc ratio of proton and electron masses) or of two lengths, which are 'pure numbers' that don't depend on what units are used: the statement that one rod is ten times as long as another is true (or false) whether we measure lengths / in feet or metres or some alien units"

 THE TUTANKHAMUN PROPHECIES

Maurice Cotterell

BEHIND THE WALL OF SILENCE

 

 

Page 190

"It is clear, from the decoded works of Tutankhamun, and Lord Pacal, that Freemasonry began in the earliest of times, although the word 'Freemasonry' had not been coined to denote the movement. In those

days these seekers of truth are best described as esotericists.

The First Signs of Freemasonry

Anterior clues appear in around 2500 BC with the appearance of the first sun-worshippers in Egypt. Their divine super-knowledge enabled them to construct the pyramids, and with the pyramids came the first enigmatic evidence of their monotheistic sun-worshipping aspirations. Aware of the true nature of life, of the mechanisms of divine reconciliation and iterative spiritual redemption, reincarnation, and the endless cycle of suffering, birth, death and rebirth, they set their secrets into stone for themselves to rediscover in a future incarnation. With the shafts of the Great Pyramid they pointed the way to everlasting life, and rebirth in the stars, while the shape of the pyramid itself epitomised the all-consuming presence and power of the sun. The orientation of their temples at Thebes, the worship of Apis the bull and Amun the ram, concealed the secrets of the heavens, as they buried their dead beneath the Milky Way. At the same time the missing capstone of Cheops and the pyramid skirt of Mereruka, with its all- seeing eye, explain the nature of God. It is not surprising that these symbols were, naturally, adopted by esotericists to explain the unexplainable to their own kind, and again to themselves in the future.

The pyramid age came and went, locking the knowledge into the monuments, re-emerging during the eighteenth dynasty with the appearance of Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. Sun-worship again thrived and Tutankhamun once again encoded the same secrets into his own treasures.

The holy number of sun-worshippers is 9, the highest number that can be re(lched before becoming one (10) with the creator. This is why Tutankhamun was entombed in nine layers of coffin. This is why the pyramid skirts of the two statues, guarding the entrance to the Burial Chamber, were triangular (base 3), when the all-seeing eye-skirt of Mereruka contained a pyramid skirt with a base of four sides. The message concealed here is that the 3 should be squared, which equals 9. Freemasons" for reasons we shall see, are said to be 'on the square'.

Page 191

The pyramid skirts of Tutankhamun therefore reveal that Tutankhamun was 'on the square', one of the first 'esotericists', whose allegiance was to the one God, his father, the great architect of the universe.

Chiram Abiff, the Man from Tyre

Better-informed, higher-ranking Freemasons believe their antecedence began with the appearance of Chiram Abif£ the Grand Master of the Dionysiac Architects, architect of King Hiram of Tyre who designed the temple of the Jewish king Solomon in Jerusalem in around 1000 BC (350 years after the death of Tutankhamun).

Solomon, on assuming the throne from his father David, experienced a dream in which God appeared, saying, '. . . Ask what I shall give to thee?' (1 Kings iii, 5). Solomon replied, '. . . Give me an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad.' In reply God promised '. . . because you have asked for the wisdom to rule justly, instead of long life for yourself or riches or the death of your enemies, I will do what you have asked. I will give you more wisdom and understanding than anyone has had before or will ever have again. I will also give you what you have not asked for; all your life you will have wealth and honour, more than that of any other

king' (1 Kings iii, 9-13). 1

Solomon wrote more than 3,000 proverbs, which together form the body of the Book of Proverbs. He is also thought to have originated the phrases '. . . Vanity of vanities. . . all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passes away, and another generation cometh (Ecclesiastes i,2-4), which have been interpreted, in the Jewish Kabbalah, as 'all is illusion' (Maya).

The commencement of his reign of wisdom is acknowledged with the story of two harlots, who live in the same house. Each had given birth to a baby within the space of three days. One crushed her own baby, while asleep, and exchanged it for the other's. Solomon had to decide to whom the living baby belonged. '. . . the king said, Bring me a sword. . . Divide the living child into two, and give half to the one, and half to the other. Then spake the woman who was the mother of the living child, . . . 0 my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.. Then the king said, Give the first the living child and in no /

Page 192 Figure 93 omitted

Page 193

/ wise slay it: she is the mother thereof' (1 Kings iii, 24-27). II The Freemason's Pocket Book (1771) describes Solomon's architect

Chiram as the:

. . . most cunning, skilful, and curious workman that ever lived, whose activities were not confined to building alone but extended to all kinds of work whether in gold, silver, brass or iron; whether in linen, tapestry or embroidery; whether considered as an architect, statuary founder or designer, separately or together he equally excelled. From his designs and under his direction all the rich and splendid furniture of the Temple and its several appendages were begun, carried on and finished. Solomon appointed him, in his absence to fill the chair as Deputy Grand Master; and in his presence, Senior Grand Warden, Master of Work [various ranks of Freemason] and General Overseer of all artists, as well as those whom David had formerly procured from Tyre and Sidon.

This was the first link between the word 'Freemason' and the guardians

of esoteric knowledge led by Chiram Abiff the Architect, who - constructed stone buildings, a stonemason.

Solorpon's magnificent temple, destroyed in around 587 BC, was reporte<fly built by magic, taking only seven years to construct -legend has it without a sound, without instruments, without the hammer of contention, the axe of division or the tool of any mischief. Its building was thought possible because Chiram Abiff possessed secret knowledge, handed down from the pyramid-builders. The plan of the temple was, like the base of the Great Pyramid, laid out in four parts, a square reflecting the four worlds, the intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual (figure 93).

Two pillars at the entrance, one Doric, one Corinthian, represented the duality of severity and mercy. The main courtyard was laid to a pattern of squares, chequered tiles of black and white, representing the days and nights of time, and at the same time the contrast between life and death or, more precisely, death and everlasting life. This explains the symbolism of the chequered floor, the two columns and the temple featured in Masonic regalia.

The centre of Solomon's courtyard contained a perfect cube, the 'holy of holies', the solid-gold 'Oracle' encrusted in jewels. The inner / Page 195 / temple was a marvel of courtyards and balconies, adorned with 1,453 magnificently sculpted Parisian-marble columns, 2,906 decorated pilasters and statues of stone and metal. The buildings and courtyards could hold an estimated gathering of 300,000.

Anderson's Constitutions of the Freemasons (1723) comments:

. . . the finest structures of Tyre and Sidon could not be compared with the Eternal God's Temple at Jerusalem. . . there were employed 3,600 Princes, or 'Master Masons', to conduct the w,ork according to Solomon's directions, with 80,000 hewers of stone in the mountains ('Fellow Craftsmen'), and 70,000 labourers, in all 153,600, besides the levy under Adoniram to work in the mountains of Lebanon by turns with the Sidonians, viz 30,000 being in all 183,600.

According to the Biblical account, Chiram returned home following completion of the temple, although according to A. E. Waite (New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry):

The legend of the Master Builder is the greatest allegory of Masonry. It happens that this figurative story is grounded on the fact of a personality mentioned in Holy Scripture, but this historical background is of the accident and not of the essence; the significance is in the allegory and not in any point of history which may lie behind it.

The categories of worker Chiram chose to build the temple included 'Entered Apprentice', 'Fellow Craftsman' and 'Master Mason'. Each was privy to certain passwords and signs through the knowledge by which they could be recognised. Manly P. Hall suggests that 'at least three "fellow craftsmen//, more daring than their companions, determined to force Chiram to reveal to them the password of the Master's degree'. Chiram, about to leave the temple by one of its three gates, was set upon by one of the craftsmen wielding a 61-centimetre (24-inch) builder's measuring" gauge. Chiram refused to reveal the secret and was struck about the throat. Fleeing to the west gate, he was confronted again, this time by a craftsman carrying a square (builder's set-square). This time, refusing once again to divulge the sacred secret, he was struck on the breast. Staggering to the east gate, he was met by the third, who assaulted

194

 

 

THE BIOLOGY OF DEATH

Lyall Watson

1974

Page 49

49

"Life and death seem to be inseparable, but if it is true that both are distinct from the state that we have called goth, and if instruments can be produced to measure this difference, then the situation will be at least partly resolved. At the moment there are hundreds of incurable patients all over the world lingering on for months or even years in severe states of debilitation and depletion, seemingly alive simply because of mechanical or clinical intervention. I believe that organisms under these conditions, like cells in isolation, run down into anonymity and cease to exist as individuals or even as living units. Emotionally we know this to be true. One only has to see how those looking after helpless cases, despite great kindness and the best of intentions, end up treating them like machines that require tending. The response and the analogy are fair, because I believe (although it has never been measured) that the organisers of life in these goth individuals will prove to be either qualitatively different or at least attenuated to the point where they become quantitatively negligible.

As long ago as 1836, in a Manual of Medical Jurisprudence, this was said: 'Individuals who are apparently destroyed in a sudden manner, by certain wounds, diseases or even decapi- tation, are not really dead, but are only in conditions incompat- ible with the persistence of life. '231 This is an elegant and vital distinction. Death is not 'incompatible with the persistence of life'. Our ability to bring all kinds of death back to life is limited only by the state of our technology. There are, however, conditions beyond recall - and these are the ones characteristic of goth.

One way of resolving our difficulties with death, is to regard it simply as a disease.287 In many respects it is a temporary state, one that like a sickness, can be cured. Just as there are some diseases still beyond our control, so there are some levels of death with which we cannot yet cope. The terminology of disease becomes relevant. We can begin to speak of 'attacks of death' and to distinguish between someone who is 'only slightly dead' or 'very seriously dead'

 

THE BIOLOGY OF DEATH

Lyall Watson

1974

Page 49

"As long ago as 1836, in a Manual of Medical Jurisprudence, this was said: 'Individuals who are apparently destroyed in a sudden manner, by certain wounds, diseases or even decapi-tation, are not really dead, but are only in conditions incompat-ible with the persistence of life."

 

THE OTHER MAN

continues, weaving the thread of the gossamer web

     

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

ThomasMann

1924

"To speak of sorrow would be disingenuous. Yet in these days Hans Castorp's eyes did wear an expression more musing than common. This death, which could at no time have moved him greatly, and after the lapse of years could scarcely move him at all, meant the sundering of yet another bond with the life be-low; gave to what he rightly called his freedom the final seal. In the time of which we speak, all contact between him and the flat-land had ceased. He sent no letters thither, and received none thence. He no longer ordered Maria Mancini, having found a brand up here to his liking, to which he was now as faithful as once to his old-time charmer: a brand that must have carried even a polar explorer through the sorest and severest trials; armed with which, and no other solace, Hans Castorp could lie and bear it out indefinitely, as one does at the sea-shore. It was an especially well cured brand, with the best leaf wrapper, named

"Light of Asia ";

 

THE

LIGHT OF ASIA  

Sir Edward Arnold

1909  

'THE LIGHT OF ASIA.

 OR

 THE GREAT RENUNCIATION

 (Mahabinishkramana)

 BEING

 THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF GAUTAMA

 

AH! BLESSED LORD! OH, HIGH DELIVERER!

 FORGIVE THIS FEEBLE SCRIPT, WHICH DOTH THEE WRONG,

 MEASURING WITH LITTLE WIT THY LOFTY LOVE.

 AH! LOVER! BROTHER! GUIDE! LAMP OF THE LAW!

 I TAKE MY REFUGE IN THY NAME AND THEE!

 I TAKE MY REFUGE IN THY LAW OF GOOD!

 I TAKE MY REFUGE IN THY ORDER! OM!

 THE DEW IS ON THE LOTUS! - RISE, GREAT SUN!

 AND LIFT MY LEAF AND MIX ME WITH THE WAVE.

 OM MANI PADME HUM, THE SUNRISE COMES!

 THE DEWDROP SLIPS INTO THE SHINING SEA! "

 

 

THE SPIRITUAL TOURIST

Mick Brown

Edition

1

999

Sir Edwin Arnold was another of the same breed. An educationalist and journalist - he was at one time editor of the Daily Telegraph -

Arnold was originally sent to India as the principal of a government college in Poona. He became absorbed in Oriental studies and wrote an epic poem on the life of the

Buddha,

The Light of Asia,

 

 

It gets stranger, and stranger, said the far yonder scribe, writing to the stranger, the further words,

Mother, Daughter, Sister, Wife.

 

 

THE SPIRITUAL TOURIST

Mick Brown

Edition

1

999  

 

 

THE SPIRITUAL TOURIST

Mick Brown

1

999

Page 108

were raised, the Dalai Lama had placed his hand over Martin's, and let it rest there. Throughout the course of the argument, Martin said, the Dalai Lama's hand remained utterly still, utterly firm, conveying not the slightest flicker of anxiety, irritation or impatience - rather, his resting hand conveyed, as Martin put it, 'an eternity of stillness'.

We talked about the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Dalai Lama's attempts to introduce democracy into the Tibetan community in exile, and the spread of Tibetan Buddhist teachings to the West. 'West too big a word,' he said, wagging his finger. 'Some of the West.' He spoke in a guttural English. When the right word failed to come he snapped his fingers and barked at the interpreter, 'English word! English word!' His neck, I noticed, was bullish; his heavy shoulders rolled, and the folds of flesh on his arms shook. There was nothing the least ethereal about him.

The conversation moved to the subject of compassion. All the suffering in the world arises from cherishing oneself, he said, all the happiness in the world arises from cherishing others. Treating other people gently, sincerely, compassionately - this was the source of true personal happiness. 'This should not be considered as a religious matter. It is a basic requirement of human beings. And our very existence, I believe, is based on these human qualities.'

In Buddhism, he said, contentment and peace of mind are the most highly prized things, since these are all that one carries from this life to the next. At the heart of this contentment is motivation: the motivation responsible for unhappiness is selfishness, or 'self-cherishing'. It is this that blinds us to the unity, the inter-dependence, of all things, and the knowledge that our well-being depends on the well-being of others. To hate or hurt others is to hate or hurt ourselves. We should be grateful to our enemies, the Dalai Lama said, for it is they who give us our greatest opportunities to deepen our patience, tolerance and compassion..."

 

Page 109

"According to the Mahayana Buddhist teaching, at the moment of enlightenment the Buddha made the supreme sacrifice by vowing to forgo release into nirvana until all suffering was ended in the world. Thus was established the ideal of the Changchub Sempa, or bodhisattva - the highest goal for which a practitioner can strive - to attain enlightenment and return to the round of rebirth in order to work for the benefit of others. The Dalai Lama, it is believed, represents the highest expression of this ideal - the fourteenth reincarnation of Avalokiteshvara, the Buddha of compassion and a manifestation of the Buddha himself. His very existence is, in itself, testament to an idea of the perfectibility of man.

Buddhism began to infiltrate Tibet from India in the seventh century, but it was not until the eighth century, and the advent of the yogi Padmasambhava, that Tibet began to develop its own particular, esoteric and highly ritualised form of mystical practice, based on the three Buddhist paths, the Hinayana, the Mahayana and the tantric, or Vajrayana.

It was Padmasambhava, or Guru Rimpoche as he became known, who, legend has it, tamed the old animistic deities of the Bon religion and made them subordinate to the Buddha-dharma, and who founded Tibet's first Buddhist monastery, Samye. Padmasambhava became the 'root-guru' of the Nyingmapa tradition of teachings - one of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism (the others are the Gelugpa, the Kagyupa and the Sakyapa).

While the teaching that all beings are subject to rebirth until they achieve liberation is central to all schools of Buddhism, the theory of identifiable reincarnation is uniquely Tibetan, originating in the twelfth century with the tantric master Dusum Khypena, the founder of the Kagyupa tradition. Kagyu means 'linear oral instruction', and the order prides itself on its teachings having been / Page 110 / transmitted in an unbroken line from master to disciple since the eighth century.

The lineage originated with the Indian Tilopa, whose disciple was Naropa. Naropa's teaching was brought to Tibet by Marpa the Translator, who passed it to Milarepa, who passed it, in turn, to Gampopa. Dusum Khypena was Gampopa's disciple. He is said to have attained complete enlightenment in his middle age, after months of solitary meditation and fasting. Recognising his pupil's attainments, Gampopa laid a hand upon his head and told him, 'My son, you have severed your bond with the world of phenomenal existence and henceforth it will be your duty to impart" this realisation to others.'

In his early seventies, Dusum Khypena founded Tsurphu mon-astery, and as head of the Kagyu order took the title of Karmapa. He died at the age of eighty-four, leaving a letter predicting that ten years later he would be reborn as 'Karma Pakshi'. In accordance with this -

prophecy, Karma Pakshi took birth ten years later, under auspicious circumstances and demonstrating miraculous powers, and was duly recognised as the second Karmapa. The seventeenth Karmapa, who was born in 1985, presently lives at Tsurphu monastery.

In a society where celibacy was fundamental to monastic life, identifiable reincarnation not only affirmed the philosophical ideal of returning to continue work over successive lifetimes; it also ensured the continuity of both a spiritual and a political hierarchy.

Under successive Karmapas, the Kagyupa tradition remained the dominant force in Tibetan spiritual and political life until the fifteenth century, when monastic corruption opened the door to a reforming movement led by a scholar named Je Tsongkhapa, who systematised the Buddhist teachings into one great volume, The Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path (the Lamrim Chempo). From this grew the Gelugpa order, and the office of the Dalai Lama - a title bestowed by the Mongols on Sonam Gyatso, the abbot of Drepung monastery, at the same time retrospectively bequeathing his two predecessors the same position, making Sonam Gyatso the third Dalai Lama. For the next four hundred years, despite the incursions of the Mongols and the Manchus, and the internecine struggles between the various monastic traditions, Buddhism flourished in Tibet, with the Dalai Lama as its spiritual and political figurehead.

Its remote geographical position - a vast, windswept, mountainous wilderness; two-thirds of the country stands on a plateau at an altitude / Page111 / of 15,000 ft. and Lhasa, standing at 12,000 ft., is the highest capital city in the world - kept Tibet effectively isolated from the world beyond its borders. At the same time, its mythical role as a cradle of esoteric spiritual wisdom made it an object of mystery and fascination to Western explorers. Tibet produced its own fantastic legends of adepts who could fly, or walk through walls and speak in the tongues of birds and animals, of yogis practising tum mo meditation, or 'inner heat', able to sit naked in snow, drying off sheets drenched in water with the heat of their bodies, or to travel enormous distances by gompa running, using highly developed breathing techniques. Or of 'rainbow body', where, at death, the adept simply 'dematerialises', leaving only a small pile of nails and hair to verify that he was ever there at all. (Attainment of magical powers is known in Tibetan Buddhism as 'the relative achievement'. Attainment of Buddhahood is 'the ultimate achievement'. When, half teasingly, I asked the Dalai Lama whether he would leave the earth in 'rainbow body' he burst into laughter and replied that he didn't think so. 'You need a lot of practice and special training for that. I've not yet reached these things. ')

Tibet's place in Western myth as a cradle of spiritual wisdom owes much to the esoteric teachings of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. In Russia, the mythology of 'The Unknown Superiors' - an enlightened hierarchy of beings who were supposed to dwell in Tibet - was an important element in Rosicrucian Masonry, and probably influenced the teachings of Madame Helena Blavatsky. Blavatsky claimed to have spent three years in Tibet, studying with enlightened masters, and her encounter with these mahatmas, as they became known, became the foundation stone for the Theosophical Society which was to prove enormously influential in propagating Eastern religious ideas in the West.

In her book Isis Unveiled Blavatsky argued that Buddhism was the 'wisdom doctrine' by which science and religion would be united. She described Buddhism, 'even in its dead letter', as 'incomparably higher, more noble, more philosophical and more scientific than the teaching of any other church or religion'. In 1880, Blavatsky and Olcott became the first Europeans to 'take refuge' in Theravada Buddhism, receiving the five Buddhist lay precepts before a bikkhu in a temple at Galle in Ceylon.

Blavatsky looked to Buddhism, rather than Christianity, for her belief in the coming of the next great world teacher. Buddhist / Page 112 / legend teaches that while an infinite number of beings may attain enlightenment and become Buddhas, during this world age, or kalpa, there will be one thousand fully enlightened Buddhas who will 'turn the wheel of dharma'. Four of these have already come and gone; Guatama Buddha (or Shakyamuni, as he is known in Tibetan teaching) was the fourth. The fifth - or Forthcoming Buddha - is the bodhisattva Jampa, or Maitreya (Jampa means 'loving kindness').

According to legend, until he descends to earth, Maitreya, like Shakyamuni Buddha, resides in the Ganden paradise, the third heaven of the senses, where all bodhisattvas await rebirth. The residents of Ganden are said to be 200 metres in height, and to live for 4,000 years, each day being the equal of 400 human years. Maitreya, it is said, will come after the decline of Guatama's teachings, to lead the world out of the dark age of the Kal; Y uga. This prophecy of the Buddha to come became a central preoccupation of theosophy, eventually leading some years after Blavatsky's death to the declaration that 'a vehicle' for Maitreya had emerged in the slight, boyish and diffident frame of an Indian boy named Jiddu Krishnamurti."

"Page 113

"On his last day in Lhasa, Younghusband was presented with a small, bronze Buddha by the Ganden Tripa, and the next morning rode out of the city into the surrounding mountains. Seated on a rock, he later wrote, he was suddenly seized by the most intense, untellable joy. 'The whole world was ablaze with the same ineffable bliss that was burning within me . . . I was beside myself with an intensity of joy, such as even the joy of first love can give only a faint foreshadowing of. And with this indescribable joy came a revelation of the essential goodness of the world. I was convinced past all refutation that men were good at heart, that the evil in them was superficial. . . in short, that men at heart are divine.'

Younghusband's expedition was a futile gesture which did little to bring Tibet within the sphere of control or influence of the West. The British withdrew, leaving only a pair of trade agents and a telegraph wire inside Tibet's borders. In 1907, a treaty between Britain and Russia carved up the area of the 'Great Game' between them, with the two great powers agreeing to keep out of Tibet and to conduct any negotiations concerning the country with the Chinese, thus opening the door to China's renewed claims to territorial sovereignty over the country. (Younghusband himself was one of that rare breed of colonial soldiers and administrators who became enamoured of Eastern philosophy; he later sponsored the World Congress of Faiths which brought together a Russian orthodox theologian, Muslim scholars, the Hindu teacher Radhakrishnan and the great Japanese teacher of Zen Buddhism T .0. Suzuki, in London in 1936.

Sir Edwin Arnold was another of the same breed. An educationalist and journalist - he was at one time editor of the Daily Telegraph -

Arnold was originally sent to India as the principal of a government college in Poona. He became absorbed in Oriental studies and wrote an epic poem on the life of the

Buddha

The Light of Asia

which was published in sixty editions in England and eighty in America.)

The idea of Tibet as the focal point for a romantic Western yearning for spiritual enlightenment and salvation only increased after the Great War, providing a powerful mythology in the face of the chaos of industrialised Europe. In 1925 the playwright and poet Antonin Artaud published a plea to the thirteenth Dalai Lama in La Revolution surrealiste./ Page 114 / We are your most faithful servants. Direct your lights to us in a language that our contaminated European spirits can understand and, if need be, transform our Spirit, make for us a spirit entirely turned towards those perfect summits where the Spirit of Man no longer suffers.

This view of Tibet as a place of spiritual deliverance was compounded in the popular imagination by James Hilton's novel, The Lost Horizon, which was published in 1933. Hilton's story told of four Westerners who are flown from India to a Himalayan redoubt - 'Shangri-La' - where the inhabitants devote themselves to lives of art, music and contemplation of the truths of all the great religions. (La means 'pass' in Tibetan. Hilton probably took the name from the Changri La, a pass located near the Everest region in Tibet which was frequented by the British climber George Mallory in his attempts to ascend Everest in the early Twenties.) In this peaceful and rarefied paradise, people live for centuries, but anyone who tries to leave grows old immediately. Authority is vested in the High Lama - in Hilton's tale not a Tibetan at all, but a Western capuchin monk, who is more than 300 years old.

Shangri-La has been designed to preserve the world's most ennobling spiritual and cultural values against the impending holocaust which 'will rage till every flower of culture is trampled, and all human beings are levelled in a vast chaos'. The parallels with Madame Blavatsky's teachings about the great brotherhood of Mahatmas, guiding the world's destiny, are inescapable. Hilton's book became an enormous popular success. It was turned into a film and introduced the word 'Shangri-La' into the lexicon as a synonym for a peaceful, idealised Utopia.

Growing up in the Sixties, I can remember being intrigued by the books of one T. Lobsang Rampa. His first book, The Third Eye, the autobiography of a Tibetan monk, raised in the Chakpori monastery in Lhasa, was published in 1956. He went on to write a dozen more books, including The Cave of the Ancient and Living with .the Lama (which claimed to be the autobiography of his cat, transmitted telepathically), their enormous popular success apparently unaffected by the subsequent revelation that 'Lobsang Rampa' was not a Tibetan monk at all, but one Cyril Henry Hoskins, the son of a plumber from Plympton in Devon.

Hoskins had based his books on a vivid imagination and the / Page 115 / assiduous study of the writings of Madame Blavatsky and Alexandra David-Neel, who travelled extensively in Tibet and was the first European woman ever to have an audience with the thirteenth, whom she met when he was in temporary exile in Darjeeling in 1912.

 

THE SPIRITUAL TOURIST

Mick Brown

1

999

 

Page114

"Growing up in the Sixties, I can remember being intrigued by the books of one T. Lobsang Rampa. His first book, The Third Eye, the autobiography of a Tibetan monk, raised in the Chakpori monastery in Lhasa, was published in 1956. He went on to write a dozen more books, including The Cave of the Ancient and Living with .the Lama (which claimed to be the autobiography of his cat, transmitted telepathically), their enormous popular success apparently unaffected by the subsequent revelation that 'Lobsang Rampa' was not a Tibetan monk at all, but one Cyril Henry Hoskins, the son of a plumber from Plympton in Devon.

Hoskins had based his books on a vivid imagination and the / Page 115 / assiduous study of the writings of Madame Blavatsky and Alexandra David-Neel, who travelled extensively in Tibet and was the first European woman ever to have an audience with the thirteenth, whom she met when he was in temporary exile in Darjeeling in 1912."

 

4

FACT
30

12

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FICTION
76

40

4

11

106

52

7

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7

7

7

 

THE THIRD EYE

Lobsang Rampa

1956

Chapter Sixteen

LAMAHOOD

Page 167

"A CONSIDERABLE amount of training was now given to me in the art of astral travelling, where the spirit, or ego, leaves the body and remains connected to life on Earth only by the Silver Cord. Many people find it difficult to believe that we travel in this way. Everyone does, when they sleep. Nearly always in the West it is involuntary; in the East lamas can do it when fully conscious. Thus they have a complete memory of what they have done, what they have seen and where they have been. In the West people have lost the art, and so when they return to wakefulness they think they have had a "dream".

All countries had a knowledge of this astral journeying. In England it is alleged that "witches can fly". Broomsticks are not necessary, except as a means of rationalizing what people do not want to believe! In the U.S.A. the "Spirits of the Red Men" are said to fly. In all countries, everywhere, there is a buried know-ledge of such things. I was taught to do it. So can anyone be.

Telepathy is another art which is easy to master. But not if it is going to be used as a stage turn. Fortunately this art is now gaining some recognition. Hypnotism is yet another art of the East. I have carried out major operations on hypnotized patients, such as leg amputations and those of an equally serious nature. The patient feels nothing, suffers nothing, and awakens in better condition through not having to also suffer the effects of the orthodox anaesthetics. Now, so I am told, hypnotism is being used to a limited extent in England.

Invisibility is another matter. It is a very good thing that in- visibility is beyond more than the very, very few. The principle is easy: the practice is difficult. Think of what attracts you. A noise '1 A quick movement ora flashing colour '1 Noises and quick actions rouse people, make them notice one. An immobile person is not so easily seen, nor is a "familiar" type or class of person. The man who brings the mail, often people will say that "no one has been / Page 168 / here, no one at all",yet their mail will have been brought. How, by an invisible man? Or one who is such a familiar sight that he is not "seen", or perceived. (A policeman is always seen as nearly everyone has a guilty conscience!) To attain a state of invisibility one must suspend action, and also suspend one's brain waves! If the physical brain is allowed to function (think), any other person near by becomes telepathically aware (sees) and so the state of invisibility is lost. There are men in Tibet who can become invisible at will, but they are able to shield their brain waves. It is perhaps fortunate that they are so few in number.

Levitation can be accomplished, and sometimes is, solely for the technical exercise involved. It is a clumsy method of moving around. The effort involved is considerable. The real adept uses astral travelling, which is truly a matter of the utmost simplicity

. . . provided one has a good teacher. I had, and I could (and can) do astral travelling. I could not make myself invisible, in spite of my most earnest efforts. It would have been a great blessing to be able to vanish when I was wanted to do something unpleasant, but this was denied me. Nor, as I have said before, was I possessed of musical talents. My singing voice brought down the wrath of the Music Master, but that wrath was as naught to the commotion I caused when I tried to play the cymbals-thinking that anyone could use those things-and quite accidentally caught a poor un- fortunate monk on each side of his head. I was advised, unkindly, to stick to clairvoyance and medicine!

We did much of what is termed yoga in the Western world. It is, of course, a very great science and one which can improve a human almost beyond belief. My own personal opinion is that yoga is not suitable for Western people without very considerable modification. The science has been known to us for centuries; we are taught the postures from the very earliest age. Our limbs, skeleton, and muscles are trained to yoga. Western people, per-haps of middle age, who try some of these postures can definitely harm themselves. It is merely my opinion as a Tibetan, but I do feel that unless there is a set of exercises which have been so modi- fied, people should be warned against trying them. Again, one needs a very good native teacher, one thoroughly trained in male and female anatomy if harm is to be avoided. Not merely the postures can do harm, but the breathing exercises also!

Breathing to a particular pattern is the main secret of many Tibetan phenomena. But here again, unless one has a wise and experienced teacher, such exercises can be extremely harmful, if not fatal. Many travellers have written of "the racing ones", lamas who can control the weight of the body (not levitation) and race / Page 169 / at high speed for hours and hours over the ground, hardly touch- ing the earth in passing. It takes much practice, and the~'racer" has to be in a semi-trance state. Evening is the best time, when there are stars upon which to gaze, and the terrain must be monotonous, with nothing to break the semi-trance state. The man who is speed- ing so is in a condition similar to that of asleep-walker. He visual- izes his destination, keeps it constantly before his Third Eye~ and unceasingly recites the appropriate mantra. Hour after hou,r he will race, and reach his destination untired. This system has only one advantage over astral travelling. When travelling by the latter, one moves in the spirit state and so cannot move material objects, cannot, for example, carry one's belongings. The arjopa, as one calls the "racer", can carry his normal1oad, but he labours under disadvantages in his turn.

Correct breathing enables Tibetan adepts to sit naked on ice, seventeen thousand feet or so above sea-level, and keep hot, so hot that the ice is melted and the adept freely perspires.

. A digression for a moment: the other day I said that I had done this myself at eighteen thousand feet above sea-level. My listener, quite seriously, asked me: "With the tide in, or out T'

Have you ever tried to lift a heavy object when your lungs were empty of air? Try it and you will discover it to be alniost impos- sible. Then fill your lungs as much as you can, hold your breath, and lift with ease. Or you may be frightened, or angry, take a deep breath, as deep as you can, and hold it for ten seconds. Then exhale slowly. Repeat three times at least and you will find that your heart-beats are slowed up and you feel calm..."

 
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THE THIRD EYE

Lobsang Rampa

1956

Chapter Sixteen

LAMAHOOD

Page 169

"...The time had now come when I was to take the actual examination for lamahood. Before this I had to be blessed by the Dalai Lama. Every year he blesses every monk in Tibet, individually, not in bulk as does, for example, the Pope of Rome. The Inmost One touches the majority with a tassel attached to a stick. Those whom he favours, or who are of high rank, he touches on the head with one hand. The highly favoured are blessed by him placing two hands on the person's head. For the first time he placed both hands on me and said in a low voice: "You are doing well, my boy: do even better at your examination. Justify the faith we have placed in you." ,

Three days before my sixteenth birthday I presented myself for / Page170 / examination together with about fourteen other candidates. The "examination boxes" seemed to be smaller, or perhaps it was that I was bigger. When I lay on the floor, with my feet against one wall, I could touch the other wall with my hands above my head, but my arms had to be bent as there was not enough room to stretch them straight. The boxes were square, and at the front the wall was such that I could just touch the top with my outstretched hands, again with my arms above my head. The back wall was about twice my height. There was no roof, so at least we had ample air! Once again we were searched before entering, and all we were allowed to take in were our wooden bowl, our rosary, and writing material. With the Invigilators satisfied, we were led one by one to a box, told to enter, and after we had done so the door was shut and a bar put across. Then the Abbpt and the Head Examiner came and fixed a huge seal, so that the door could not be opened. A trap- hatch some seven inches square could be opened only from the outside. Through .this we were passed examination papers at the beginning of each day. The worked papers were collected at dusk. Tsampa was passed in as well, once a day. Buttered tea was dif-ferent, we could have as much as we wanted by merely calling "po-cha kesho" (bring tea). As we were not allowed out for any purpose whatever, we did not drink too much!

My own stay in that box was for ten days. I was taking the herbal examination, anatomy, a subject of which I had already a very good knowledge, and divinity. Those subjects occupied me from first to last light for five seemingly endless days. The sixth day brought a change, and a commotion. From a nearby box came howls and screams. Running footsteps, and a babble of voices. Clatter of a heavy wooden door being unbarred. Soothing mur-murs, and the screams subsided to a sobbing undertone. For one, the examination had ended. For me, the second half was about to start. An hour late, the sixth day's papers were brought. Meta- physics. Yoga. Nine branches of it. And I had to pass in the whole lot.

Five branches are known very slightly to the Western world: Hatha yoga teaches mastery over the purely physical body, or "vehicle", as we term it. Kundalini yoga gives one psychic power, clairvoyance, and similar powers. Laya yoga teaches mastery over the mind, one of its offshoots is to remember permanently a thing once read or heard. Raja yoga prepares one for transcen- dental consciousness and wisdom. Samadhi yoga leads to supreme illumination and enables one to glimpse the purpose and plan beyond life on Earth. This is the branch which enables one, at the instant of leaving this earth-life, to grasp the Greater Reality and abandon the Round of Rebirth; unless one decided to return to / Page171 / Earth for a special purpose, such as to help others in some parti-cular way. The other forms of yoga cannot be discussed in a book of this nature, and certainly my knowledge of the English language is inadequate to do justice to such illustrious subjects.

So, for another five days I was busy, like a broody hen in a box. But even ten-day-long examinations have to end, and as the lama collected the last papers on the tenth night, he was greeted with smiles of delight. That night we had vegetables with our tsampa, the very first change from this one basic food for ten days at least. That night it was easy to sleep. At no time had I worried about passing, but I did worry about the degree of pass; I had been com-manded to be high on the final list. In the morning the seals were broken from the doors, the bars were lifted, and we had to clean our examination boxes before being able to leave. For a week we were able to recover our strength after the considerable ordeal. Then came two days of judo in which we tried all our holds, and made each other unconscious with our "anaesthetic holds". Two days more were devoted to an oral examination on the written papers, in which the examiners questioned us about our weak points only. Let me emphasize that each candidate was orally examined for two whole days each. Another week, during which we reacted according to our temperaments, and then the results were announced. To my noisily expressed joy, I was again at the top of the list. My joy was for two reasons: it proved that the Lama Mingyar Dondup was the best teacher of all, and I knew that the Dalai Lama would be pleased with my teacher and with me.

Some days later, when the Lama Mingyar Dondup was in-structing me in his room, the door was thrust open, and a panting messenger, tongue lolling and eyes staring, burst in upon us. In his hands he bore the cleft stick of messages. "From the Inmost One," he gasped, "to the Honourable Medical Lama Tuesday Lobsang Rampa". With that he took from his robe the letter, wrapped in the silken scarf of greeting. "With all speed, Honour- able Sir, I have rushed here." Relieved of his burden, he turned and dashed out even faster-in search of chang!

That message: no, I was not going to open it. Certainly it was addressed to me, but. . . what was in it ? More studies ? More work? It looked very large, and very official. So long as I had not opened it I could not know what was inside, so could not be blamed for not doing this or that. Or so my first thoughts went. My Guide was sitting back laughing at me, so I passed the letter, scarf and all, to him. He took it and opened the envelope, or outer wrapping. Two folded sheets were inside, these he spread open and read, deliberately being slow about it to tease me further. At / Page 172 / last, when I was in a fever of impatience to know the worst, he said: "It is all right, you can breathe again. We have to go to the Potala to see him without delay. That means now, Lobsang. It says here that I have to go as well." He touched the gong at his side, and to the attendant who entered, he gave instructions that our two white horses be saddled immediately. Quickly we changed our robes and selected our two best white scarves. Together we went to the Abbot and told him that we had to go to the Potala to see the Inmost One. "The Peak, eh? He was at the Norbu Linga yesterday. Oh well, you have the letter to say which it is. It must be very official."

In the courtyard monk grooms were waiting with our horses. We mounted and clattered down the mountain-path. Just a little way farther on, and we had to climb up the other mountain, the Potala, really it was hardly worth the fuss of trying to sit on a horse! The one advantage was that the horses would carry us up the steps almost to the top of the Peak. Attendants were waiting for us, as soon as we had dismounted, our horses were led away, and we were hurried off to the Inmost One's private quarters. I entered alone and made my prostrations and scarf presentation.

"Sit down, Lobsang," he said, "I am very pleased with you. I am very pleased with Mingyar for his part in your success. I have read all your examination papers myself."

That caused a shiver of fright. One of my many failings, so I have been told, is that I have a somewhat misplaced sense of humour. Sometimes it had broken out in answering the examina-tion questions, because some questions simply invite that sort of answer! The Dalai Lama read my thoughts, for he laughed out- right and said, "Yes, you have a sense of humour at the wrong times, but. . ." a long pause, during which I feared the worst, then, "I enjoyed every word."

For 'two hours I was with him. During the second hour my Guide was sent for and the Inmost One gave instructions concern-ing my further training. I was to undergo the Ceremony of the Little Death, I was to visit-with the Lama Mingyar Dondup-other lamaseries, and I was to study with the Breakers of the Dead. As these latter were of low caste, and their work of such a nature, the Dalai Lama gave me a written script in order that I could keep my own status. He called upon the Body Breakers to render me "all and every assistance in order that the secrets of the bodies may be laid bare and so that the physical reason for the body being discarded may be discovered. He is also to take possession of any body or parts of a body that he may require for his studies." So that was that!

Page 173

Before going on to deal with the disposal of dead bodies, it may be advisable to write some more about the Tibetan views on death. Our attitude is quite different from that of Western peoples. To us a body is nothing more than a "shell", a material covering for the immortal spirit. To us a dead body is worth less than an old, worn-out suit of clothes. In the case of a person dying normally, that is, not by sudden unexpected violence, we consider the process to be like this: the body is diseased, faulty, and has become so uncomfortable for the spirit that no further lessons can be learned. So it is time to discard the body. Gradually the spirit withdraws and exteriorizes outside the flesh-body. The spirit form has exactly the same outline as the material version, and can very clearly be seen by a clairvoyant. At the moment of death, the cord joining the physical and spirit bodies (the "Silver Cord" of the Christian Bible) thins and parts, and the spirit drifts off. Death has then taken place. But birth into a new life, for the "cord" is similar to the umbilical cord which is severed to launch a new-born baby to a separate existence. At the moment of death the Glow of Life- force is extinguished from the head. This Glow also can be seen by a clairvoyant, and in the Christain Bible is referred to as "The Golden Bowl". Not being a Christian I am not familiar with the Book, but I believe there is a reference to "Lest the Silver Cord be severed, and the Golden Bowl be shattered".

Three days, we say, is the time it takes for a body to die, for all the physical activity to cease, and the spirit, soul, or ego, to become quite free of its fleshly envelope. We believe that there is an etheric double formed during the life of a body. This "double" can become a ghost. Probably everyone has looked at a strong light, and on turning away apparently saw the light still. We consider that life is electric, a field of force, and the etheric double remaining at death is similar to the light one sees after looking at a strong source, or, in electrical terms, it like a strong residual magnetic field. If the body had strong reasons for clinging to life, then there is a strong etheric which forms a ghost and haunts the familiar scenes. A miser may have such an attachment for his money-bags that he has his whole focus upon them. At death probably his last thought will be of fright concerning the fate of his money, so in his dying moment he adds to the strength of his etheric. The lucky recipient of the money-bags may feel somewhat uncomfortable in the small hours of the night. He may feel that "Old So-and-so is after his money again". Yes, he is right, Old So-and-so's ghost is probably very cross that his (spirit) hands cannot get a grip on that money!

There are three basic bodies; the flesh body in which the spirit / Page 174 / can learn the hard lessons of life, the etheric, or "magnetic" body which is made by each of us by our lusts, greeds, and strong passions of various kinds. The third body is the spirit body, the "Immortal Soul'. That is our Lamaist belief and not necessarily the orthodox Buddhist belief. A person dying has to go through three stages: his physical body has to be disposed of, his etheric has to be dissolved, and his spirit has to be helped on the road to the World of Spirit. The ancient Egyptians also believe in the etheric double, in the Guides of the Dead, and in the World of Spirit. In Tibet we helped people before they were dead. The adept had no need of such help, but the ordinary man or woman, or 'trappa, had to be guided the whole way through. It may be of interest to describe what happens.

One day the Honourable Master of Death sent for me: "It is time you studied the practical methods of Freeing the Soul, Lobsang. This day you shall accompany me."

We walked down long corridors, down slippery steps, and into the trappas' quarters. Here, in a "hospital room" an elderly monk was approaching that road we all must take. He had had a stroke and was very feeble. His strength was failing and his auric colours were fading as I watched. At all costs he had to be kept conscious until there was no more life to maintain that state. The lama with me took the old monk's hands and gently held them. "You are approaching the release from toils of the flesh, Old Man. Heed my words that you may choose the easy path. Your feet grow cold. Your life is edging up, closer and closer to its final escape. Compose your mind, Old Man, there is naught to fear. Life is leaving your legs, and your sight grows dim. The cold is creeping upwards, in the wake of your waning life. Compose your mind, Old Man, for there is naught to fear in the escape of life to the Greater Reality.

The shadows of eternal night creep upon your sight, and your breath is rasping in your throat. The time draws near for the release of your throat. The time draws near for the release of your spirit to enjoy the pleasures of the After World. Compose yourself, Old Man. Your time of release is near."

The lama all the time was stroking the dying man from the collar bone to the top of his head in a way which has been proved to free the spirit painlessly. All the time he was being told of the pit- falls on the way, and how to avoid them. His route was exactly described, the route which has been mapped by those telepathic lamas who have passed over, and continued to talk by telepathy even from the next world.

"Your sight has gone, Old Man, and your breath is failing within you. Your body grows cold and the sounds of this life are no longer / Page 175 / heard by your ears. Compose yourself in peace, Old Man, for your death is now upon you. Follow the route we say, and peace and joy will be yours."

The stroking continued as the old man's aura began to diminish even more, and finally faded away. A sudden sharp explosive sound was uttered by the lama in an age-old ritual to completely free the struggling spirit. Above the still body the life-force gathered in a cloud-like mass, swirling and twisting as if in con-fusion, then forming into a smoke-like duplicate of the body to which it was still attached by the silver cord. Gradually the cord thinned, and as a baby is born when the umbilical cord is severed, so was the old man born into the next life. The cord thinned, became a mere wisp, and parted. Slowly, like a drifting cloud in the sky, or incense smoke in a temple, the form glided off. The lama continued giving instructions by telepathy to guide the spirit on the first stage of its journey. "You are dead. There is nothing more for you here. The ties of the flesh are severed. You are in Bardo. Go your way and we will go ours. Follow the route prescribed. Leave this, the World of Illusion, and enter into the Greater Reality. You are dead. Continue your way forward."

The clouds of incense rolled up, soothing the troubled air with its peaceful vibrations. In the distance drums were carrying out a rolling mutter. From some high point on the lamasery roof, a deep-toned trumpet sent its message crashing over the countryside. From the corridors outside came all the sounds of vigorous life, the "sussh sussh" of felt boots and, from somewhere, the grumb- ling roar of a yak. Here, in this little room, was silence. The silence of death. Only the telepathic instructions of the lama rippled the surface of the room's quiet. Death, another old man had gone on his long Round of Existences, profiting by his lessons in this life, maybe, but destined to continue until he reached Buddhahood by long, long effort.

We sat the body in the correct lotus posture and sent for those who prepare the bodies. Sent for others to continue the tele-pathic instruction of the departed spirit. For three days this continued, three days during which relays of lamas carried out their duties. On the morning of the fourth day one of the Ragyab came. He was from the Disposers of the Dead colony where the Lingkhor road branches to Dechhen Dzong. With his arrival, the lamas ceased their instruction, and the body was given over to the Disposer. He doubled it up into a tight circle and wrapped it in white cloth. With an easy swing, he lifted the bundle on to his shoulders and strode off. Outside he had a yak. Without hesitation he lashed the white mass on to the beast's back, and together they / Page 176 / marched off. At the Place of the..Breaking the Corpse Carrier would hand his burden to the Breakers of the Bodies. The "Place" was a desolate stretch of land dotted with huge boulders, and containing one large level stone slab, large enough to hold the 'biggest body. At the four corners of the slab there were holes in the stone, and posts driven in. Another stone slab had holes in it to half its depth.

The body would be placed upon the slab and the cloth stripped off. The arms and legs of the corpse would be tied to the four posts. Then the Head Breaker would take his long knife and slit open the body. Long gashes would be made so that the flesh could be peeled off in strips. Then the arms and legs would be sliced off and cut up. Finally, the head would be cut off and opened.

At first sight of the Corpse Carrier vultures would have come swooping out of the sky, to perch patiently on the rocks like a lot of spectators at an open-air theatre. These birds had a strict social order and any attempt by a presumptuous one to land before the leaders would result in a merciless mobbing.

By this time the Body Breaker would have the trunk of the corpse open. Plunging his hands into the cavity, he would bring out the, heart, at sight of which the senior vulture would flap heavily to the ground and waddle forward to take the heart from the Breaker's outstretched hand. The next-in-order bird would flap down to take the liver and with it would retire to a rock to eat. Kidneys, intestines, would be divided and given to the "leader" birds. Then the strips of flesh would be cut up and given to the others. One bird would come back for half the brain and perhaps one eye, and another would come flapping down for yet another tasty morsel. In a surprisingly short time all the organs and flesh would have been eaten, leaving nothing but the bare bones remaining on the slab. The breakers would snap these into con- venient sizes, like firewood, and would stuff them into the holes in the other slab. Heavy rammers would then be used to crush the bones to a fine powder. The birds would eat that!

These Body Breakers were highly skilled men. They took a pride in their work and for their own satisfaction they examined all the organs to determine the cause of death. Long experience had enabled them to do this with remarkable ease. There was, of course, no real reason why they should be so interested, but it was a matter of tradition to ascertain the illness causing "the spirit to depart from this vehicle." If a person had been poisoned-acci- dentally or deliberately-the fact soon became obvious. Certainly I found their skill of great benefit to me as I studied with them. I soon became very proficient at dissecting dead bodies. The Head / Page177 / Breaker would stand beside me and point out features of interest: "This man, Honourable Lama, has died from a stoppage of blood to the heart. See, we will slit this artery, here, and-yes-here is a clot blocking the blood flow." Or it may be: "Now this woman, Honourable Lama, she has a peculiar look. A gland here must be at fault. We will cut it out and see." There would be a pause while he cut out a good lump, and then: "Here it is, we will open it; yes, it has a hard core inside."

So it would go on. The men were proud to show me all they could, they knew I was studying with them by direct order of the Inmost One. If I was not there, and a body looked as if it was particularly interesting, they would save it until I arrived. In this way I was able to examine hundreds of dead bodies, and definitely I excelled at surgery later! (illustration omitted) This was far better training than the system whereby medical students have to share cadavers in hospital school dissecting-rooms. I know that I learned more anatomy with the Body Breakers than I did at a fully equipped medical school later.

In Tibet, bodies cannot be buried in the ground. The work would be too hard because of the rocky soil and the thinness of the earth covering. Nor is cremation possible on economic grounds; wood is scarce and to burn a body, timber would have to be imported from India and carried to Tibet across the mountains on the backs of yaks. The cost would be fantastic. Water disposal was not permissible either, for to cast dead bodies into the streams and rivers would pollute the drinking-water of the living. There is no other method open to us than air' disposal, in which, as des- cribed, birds consume the flesh and the bones. It differs only from the Western method in two ways: Westerners bury bodies and let / Page 178 / the worms take the place of birds. The second difference is that in the Western world the knowledge of the cause of death is buried with the body and no one knows if the death certificate really has stated the correct cause. Our Body Breakers make sure that they know what a person died of!

Everyone who dies in Tibet is "disposed of" in this way except the highest lamas, who are Previous Incarnations. These are embalmed and placed in a glass-fronted box where they can be seen in a temple, or embalmed and covered with gold. This latter process was most interesting. I took part in such preparations many times. Certain Americans who have read my notes on the subject cannot believe that we really used gold; they say that it would be beyond "even an American's skill"! Quite, we did not mass-produce things, but dealt with individual items as only the craftsman could. We in Tibet could not make a watch to sell for a dollar. But we can cover bodies in gold.

One evening I was called to the presence of the Abbot. He said: "A Previous Incarnation is shortly to leave his body. Now he is at the Rose Fence. I want you to be there so that you can observe the Preserving in Sacredness. "

So once again I had to face the hardships of the saddle and journey to Sera. At that lamasery I was shown to the room of the old abbot. His auric colours were on the point of extinction, and about an hour later he passed from the body to the spirit. Being an abbot, and an erudite man, he had no need to be shown the path through the Bardo. Nor had we need to wait the usual three days. For that night only the body sat in the lotus attitude, while lamas kept their death watch.

In the morning, at the first light of day, we filed in solemn pro-cession down through the main lamasery building: into the temple, and through a little-used door down to secret passages below. Ahead of me two lamas were carrying the body on a litter. It was still in the lotus position. From the monks behind came a deep chanting and, in the silences, the trill of a silver bell. We had on our red robes, and over them our yellow stoles. On the walls our shadows were thrown in flickering, dancing outline, exaggerated and distorted by the light of the butter-lamps and flaring torches. Down we went, down into secret places. At last, some fifty or sixty feet below the surface, we arrived at a sealed stone door. We entered: the room was ice-cold. The monks carefully set down the body, and then all departed except three lamas and I. Hundreds of butter-lamps were lit and provided a harsh yellow glare. Now the body was stripped of its vestments and carefully washed. Through the normal body orifices the internal organs were removed / Page 179 / and placed into jars, which were carefully sealed. The inside of the body was thoroughly washed and dried, and a special form of lacquer was poured into it. This would form a hard crust inside the body, so that the outlines would be as in life. With the lacquer dry and hard, the body cavity was packed and padded with great care so as not to disturb the shape. More of the lacquer was poured in to saturate the padding and, in hardening, to provide a solid interior. The outer surface of the body was painted with lacquer and allowed to dry. Over the hardened surface a "peeling solution" was added, so that the thin sheets of filmy silk which were now to be pasted on, could later be removed without causing harm. At last the padding of silk was considered adequate. More lacquer (of a different type) was poured on, and the body was now ready for the next stage of the preparations. For a day and a night it was allowed to remain stationary so that final and complete drying could take place. At the end of that time we returned to the room to find the body quite hard and rigid and in the lotus position. We carried it in procession to another room beneath, which was a furnace so built that the flames and heat could circulate outside the walls of this room and so provide an even and high temperature.

The floor was thickly covered with a special powder, and in this, in the centre, we placed the body. Down below, monks were already preparing to light the fires. Carefully we packed the whole room tightly with a special salt from one district of Tibet, and a mixture of herbs and minerals. Then, with the room filled from floor to ceiling, we filed out of the corridor, and the door of the room was closed and sealed with the Seal of the Lamasery. The order to light the furnaces was given. Soon came the crackling of wood and the sizzling of burning butter as the flames spread. With the furnaces well alight, they would continue to burn yak- dung and waste butter. For a whole week the fire raged down below, sending clouds of hot air through the hollow walls of the Embalming Chamber. At the end of the seventh day no more fuel was added. Gradually the fires died down and flickered out. The heavy stone walls creaked and groaned in their cooling. Once more the corridor became cool enough to enter. For three days all was still as we all waited for the room to reach the nonnal tempera- ture. On the eleventh day from the date of sealing, the Great Seal was broken and the door pushed open. Relays of monks scraped out the hardened compound with their hands. No tools were used in case the body was harmed. For two days the monks scraped away, crushing in the hands the friable salt compound. At last the room was empty-except for the shrouded body sitting so still in the centre, still in the lotus attitude. Carefully we lifted it and / Page 180 / carried it to the other room where, in the light of the butter-lamps we would be able to see more clearly.

Now the silken coverings were peeled off one by one until the body alone remained. The preserving had been perfect. Except that it was much darker, the body might have been that of a sleeping man, who might at any time awaken. The contours were as in life and there was no shrinkage. Once again lacquer was applied to the naked dead body, and then the goldsmiths took over. These were men with a skill unsurpassed. Craftsmen. Men who could cover dead flesh with gold. Slowly they worked, layer upon layer of the thinnest, softest gold. Gold worth a fortune outside Tibet, but here valued only as a sacred metal-a metal that was incor-ruptible, and so symbolic of Man's final spirit state. The priest-goldsmiths worked with exquisite care, attentive to the minutest detail, so that when their work was finished they left as testimony of their skill a golden figure, exact as in life, with every line and wrinkle reproduced. Now the body, heavy with its gold, was carried to the Hall of Incarnations - and, like the others there, set up on a gold throne. Here in this Hall there were figures dating back to the earliest times-sitting in rows, like solemn judges watching with half-closed eyes the frailties and failings of the present generation. We talked in whispers here and walked carefully, as if not to disturb the living-dead. To one body in particular I was attracted-some strange power held me fascinated before it. It seemed to gaze at me with an all-knowing smile. Just then there was a gentle touch on my arm, and I nearly dropped with fright. "That was you, Lobsang, in your last incarnation. We thought you would recognize it!"

My Guide led me to the next gold figure and remarked: "And that was I."

Silently, both much moved, we crept from the Hall and the door was sealed behind us.

Many times after I was allowed to enter that Hall and study the gold-clad figures. Sometimes I went alone and sat in meditation before them. Each has its written history, which I studied with the greatest interest. Here was the history of my present Guide, the Lama Mingyar Dondup, the story of what he had done in the past, a summary of his character and his abilities. The dignities and honours conferred upon him. The manner of his passing.

Here also was my past history and that, too, I studied with my full attention. Ninety-eight gold figures sat here in the Hall, in the hidden chamber carved from the rock, and with the well-concealed door. The history of Tibet was before me. Or so I thought. The earliest history was to be shown to me later."

 

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Thomas Mann

1924

 

 

THE THIRD EYE

Lobsang Rampa

1956

Chapter

17

Page 181

FINAL INITIATION

AFTER, at various lamaseries, I had seen the embalming some half- dozen times, I was one day sent for by the Abbot in charge of Chakpori. "My friend," said he, "on the direct order of the Precious One you are to be initiated as an abbot. As you have requested, you can-like Mingyar Dondup-continue to be addressed as 'lama'. I merely give the message of the Precious One."

So as a Recognized Incarnation, I had again the status with which I left the Earth some six hundred years before. The Wheel of Life had revolved full circle.

Some time later an aged lama came to my room and told me that now I must undergo the Ceremony of the Little Death. "For, my son, until you have passed the Gateway of Death, and returned, you cannot truly know that there is no death. Your studies in astral travelling have taken you far. This will take you much farther, beyond the realms of life, and into the past of our country."

The preparatory training was hard and prolonged. For three months I led a strictly supervised life. Special courses of horrible- tasting herbs added an unpleasant item to my daily menu. I was adjured to keep my thoughts "on that alone which is pure and holy". As if one had much choice in a lamasery! Even tsampa and tea had to be taken in less quantity. Rigid austerity, strict disci- pline, and long, long hours of meditation.

At last, after three months, the astrologers said that the time was now right, the portents were favourable. For twenty-four hours I fasted until I felt as empty as a temple drum. Then I was led down those hidden stairs and passages far below the Potala. Far down we wenct, flaring torches in the hands of the others, nothing in mine. Down through the corridors I had traversed before. At last we reached the end of the passage. Solid rock confronted us. But a whole boulder was swung aside at our / Page182 / approach. Another path confronted us-a dark and narrow path, with the odour of stale air, spices, and incense. Several yards farther on we were stopped momentarily by a ponderous gold- sheathed door which was slowly opened to the accompaniment of protesting squeaks which echoed and re-echoed as if through a vast space: Here the torches were extinguished, and butter-lamps lit. We moved ahead into a hidden temple carved from the solid rock by volcanic action in days long past. These corridors and passages once had led molten lava to the mouth of a belching volcano. Now puny humans trod the way and thought that they were gods. But now, I thought, we must concentrate on the task at hand, and here was the Temple of Secret Wisdom.

Three abbots led me in. The rest of the lamaistic retinue had melted away in the darkness, as the dissolving memories of a dream. Three abbots, aged, desiccated With years and gladly awaiting their recall to the Heavenly Fields: three old men, per-haps the greatest metaphysicians in the whole of the world, ready to give me my final ordeal of initiation. Each carried in the right hand a butter-lamp, and in the left a thick stick of smouldering incense. Here the cold ,was intense, a strange cold seemingly not of this earth. The silence was profound: what faint sounds there were served merely to accentuate that silence. Our felt boots made no footfalls: we might have been ghosts gliding along. From the saffron brocade robes of the abbots there came a faint rustle. To my horror I felt tingles and shocks all over me. My hands glowed as if a fresh aura had been added. The abbots, I saw, were also' glowing. The very, very dry air and the friction of our robes, had generated a static electric charge. An abbot passed me a short gold rod and whispered, "Hold this in your left hand and draw it along the wall as you walk and the discomfort will cease." I did, and with the first release of stored electricity nearly jumped out of my boots. After that it was painless.

One by one, butter-lamps flickered into life, lit by unseen hands. As the wavering yellow light increased, I saw gigantic figures, covered in gold, and some half-buried in uncut gems. A Buddha loomed out of the gloom, so huge that the light did not reach beyond the waist. Other forms were dimly seen; the images of devils, the representations of lust, and the forms of the trials which Man had to undergo before the realization of Self.

We approached a wall on which was painted a fifteen-foot Wheel of Life. In the flickering light it appeared to revolve and made the senses reel with it. On we went until I was sure we would crash into the rock. The leading abbot vanished: what I had imagined to be a dark shadow was a well-concealed door. This / Page 183 / gave entrance to a path going down and down-a narrow, steep, winding path where the faint glow of the abbots' butter-lamps merely seemed to intensify the dark. We felt our way haltingly, stumbling, sometimes sliding. The air was heavy and oppressive and it felt as if the whole weight of the earth above was pressing down on us. I felt as if we were penetrating the heart of the world. A final bend in the tortuous passage, and a cavern opened to our view, a cavern of rock glittering with gold: veins of it-lumps of it. A layer of rock, a layer of gold, a layer of rock-so it went on. High, very high above us, gold glinted like stars in a dark night sky, as sharp specks of it caught and reflected back the faint light the lamps shed.

In the centre of the cavern was a shining black house-a house as if made of polished ebony. Strange symbols ran along its sides, and diagrams like those I had seen on the walls of the lake tunnel. We walked to the house and entered the wide, high door. Inside were three black stone coffins, curiously engraved and marked. There was no lid. I peered inside, and at the sight of the contents I caught my breath and felt suddenly faint.

"My son," exclaimed the leading abbot, "look upon these. They were gods in our land in the days before the mountains came. They walked our country when seas washed our shores, and when different stars were in the sky. Look, for none but Initiates have seen these."

I .looked again, fascinated and awed. Three gold figures, nude, lay before us. Two male and one female. Every line, every mark was faithfully reproduced by the gold. But the size The female was quite ten feet long as she lay, and the larger of the two males was not under fifteen feet. Their heads were1arge and somewhat conical at the top. The jaws were narrow, with a small, thin-lipped mouth. The nose was long and thin, while the eyes were straight and deeply recessed. No dead figures, these-they looked asleep. We moved quietly and spoke softly as if afraid they would awaken. I saw a coffin-lid to one side: on it was engraved a map of the heavens-but how very strange the stars appeared. My studies in astrology had made me quite familiar with the heavens at night: but this was very, very different.

The senior abbot turned to me and said: "You are about to become an Initiate, to see the Past and to know the Future. 'The strain will be very great. Many die of it, and many fail, but none leave here alive unless they pass. Are you prepared, and willing?"

I replied that I was. They led me to a stone slab lying between two coffins. Here at their instruction I sat in the lotus attitude, / Page 184 / with my legs folded, my spine erect, and the palms of my hands facing up.

Four sticks of incense were lighted, one for each coffin and one for my slab. The abbots each took a butter-lamp and filed out. With the heavy black door shut I was alone with the bodies of the age-old dead. Time passed as I meditated upon my stone slab. The butter-lamp which I had carried spluttered and went out. For a few moments its wick smouldered red and there was the odour of burning cloth, then even that faded and was gone.

I lay back on my slab and did the special breathing which I had been taught throughout the years. The silence and the dark were oppressive. Truly it was the silence of the grave.

Quite suddenly my body became rigid, cataleptic. My limbs became numb and icy cold. I had the sensation that I was dying, dying in that ancient tomb more than four hundred feet below the sunshine. A violent shuddering jerk within me, and the inaudible impression of a strange rustling and creaking as of old leather being unfolded. Gradually the tomb became suffused by a pale blue light, like moonlight on a high mountain-pass. I felt a swaying, a rising and falling. For a moment I could imagine that I was once more in a kite, tossing and jouncing at the end of the rope. Aware-ness dawned that I was floating above my flesh body. With aware- ness came movement. Like a puff of smoke I drifted as if on an unfelt wind. Above my head I saw a radiance, like a golden bowl. From my middle depended a cord of silver-blue. It pulsed with life and glowed with vitality.

I looked down at my supine body, now resting like a corpse amid corpses. Little differences between my body and those of the giant figures slowly became apparent. The study was absorbing. I thought of the petty conceit of present -day mankind and wondered how the materialists would explain the presence of these immense figures. I thought. . . but then I became aware that something was disturbing my thoughts. I seemed that I was no longer alone. Snatches of conversation reached me, fragments of unspoken thoughts. Scattered pictures began to flash across my mental vision. From far away someone seemed to be tolling a great, deep- toned bell. Quickly it came nearer and nearer until at last it ap-peared to explode in my head, and I saw droplets of coloured light and flashes of unknown hues. My astral body was tossed and driven like a leaf upon a winter gale. Scurrying flecks of red-hot pain lashed across my consciousness. I felt alone, deserted, a waif in a tottering universe. Black fog descended upon me, and with it a calmness not of this world.

Slowly the utter blackness enfolding me rolled away. From / Page 185 / somewhere came the booming of the sea, and the hissing rattle of shingle under the drive of the waves. I could smell the salt-laden air, and the tang of the seaweed. This was a familiar scene: I lazily turned on my back, in the sun-warmed sand, and gazed up at the palm trees. But, part of me said, I had never seen the sea, never even heard of palm trees! From a nearby grove came the sound of laughing voices, voices that grew louder as a happy group of sun-bronzed people came into sight. Giants! All of them. I looked down, and saw that I, too, was a "giant". To my astral perceptions came the impressions: countless ages ago. Earth revolved nearer the sun, in the opposite direction. The days were shorter and warmer. Vast civilizations arose, and men knew more than they do now. From outer space came a wandering planet and struck the Earth a glancing blow. The Earth was sent reeling, out of its orbit, and turning in the opposite direction. Winds arose and battered the waters, which, under different gravitational pulls, heaped upon the land, and there were floods, universal floods. Earthquakes shook the world. Lands sank beneath the seas, and others arose. The warm and pleasant land which was Tibet ceased to be a seaside resort and shot some twelve thousand feet above the sea. Around the land mighty mountains appeared, belching out fuming lava. Far away in the highlands rifts were tom in the surface, and vegetation and fauna of a bygone age continued to flourish. But there is too much to write in a book, amd some of my "astral initiation" is far too sacred and private to put into print.

Some time later I felt the visions fading and becoming dark. Gradually my consciousness, astral and physical, left me. Later I became uncomfortably aware that I was cold-cold with lying on a stone slab in the freezing darkness of a vault. Probing fingers of thought in my brain, "Yes, he has returned to us. We are coming !" Minutes passed, and a faint glow approached. Butter-lamps. The three old abbots.

"You have done well, my son. For three days you have lain here Now you have seen. Died. And lived."

Stiffly I climbed to my feet, swaying with weakness and hunger. Out from that never-to-be-forgotten chamber and up to the cold, cold air of the other passages. I was faint with hunger, and over-come with all that I had seen and experienced. I ate and drank my fill, and that night, as I lay down to sleep, I knew that soon I would have to leave Tibet, and go to the strange foreign countries, as foretold. But now I can say that they were and are stranger than I would have imagined possible.

 

THE FINDING OF THE THIRD EYE

Vera Stanley Alder

1968

13

THE 'THIRD EYE'

IN THE preceding chapters a bird's-eye view has been taken of the conditions surrounding developing humanity.

The possible fruits of a deeper understanding of various aspects of life have been considered, such aspects, for instance, as the planetary influences by whose aid we develop, and which we can' study through astrology and numbers, and by their manifesta- tions through Colour, Sound and Form. A little research has brought to light the possibility that the discoveries of men of science today may coincide with the knowledge of the mystics of all times, with a difference only of presentation and nomen- clature, and the fact that the Mystics always postulated an ulti- mate Cause and Law behind all phenomena, while present-day scientists seem afraid to link up with such big issues.

Finally we have considered the perfecting of our physical life through more intelligent control of diet, exercise and the human relationships.

Let us now draw away the Veil still further and take a peep at what may be the future awaiting man when he struggles out of the rut of materialism and finally takes the reins of his life into his own hands. It looks as if the Powers that Be are tantalizing humanity into making this effort, because they are allowing hints and bits of knowledge to filter through in a more general way than ever before. We find all sorts of unexpected people playing enthusiastically with these jewels as if they were bright new toys. On every hand we hear glib talk of trances, visions, heatings and divine guidance. We hear of intimate relationships with the 'Masters', of mystic experiences upon the 'Path'. We are given full details of 'Initiations', reincarnations, and Magic Black and White! Hundreds of societies and cults with scores of 'Teachers' have sprung up everywhere like a mushroom growth-and of

127

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HERE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LIFE OF SRI RAMAKRISHNA

Compiled from various authentic sources

Advaita Ashram

Mayavati, Himalayas

1924

BIRTH

Page131

We make no attempt to explain the strange inci-dents narrated above. We shall only remind the reader that similar stories are associated with the advent of Prophets and Incarnations all over the world. The in-cidents here related are not based on mere hear say, but, as far as possible, have been gathered from authentic sources.

The blessed hour for which Khudiram and Chan-dra were anxiously waiting at last drew near. On the morning of February 18th, in the year 1836, Chandra told her husband that the time of her delivery was at hand, but the following night was wellnigh passed be- fore, with the help of Dhani, she gave birth to a boy. The lying-in room where the august stranger was born was a small hut containing a husking machine and an oven for boiling paddy. It was the vernal season, and nature had breathed new life into the world after the long winter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

THE BIOLOGY OF DEATH  

SURVIVAL WITHOUT THE BODY

Page 175

"Unconscious poltergeist activities are usually limited to a fairly small area. The only really good quantitive study was made on phenomena surrounding a young shipping clerk in Miami. He / Page 176 / was tested in a large warehouse and the movements of nineteen objects in his vicinity were both watched and mea-sured. There was a definite pattern to the movements; with objects close to him travelling for short distances on a clockwise path with an outward component, and objects farther away moving longer distances in a counterclockwise direction towards the subject. The existence of this pattern, together with the fact that most movements started to the left and behind the young clerk, suggests that despite the random nature of the occurrences, they do follow a pattern which would be consistent with the existence of a physical force field."

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6+3
9
NINE
9

8

MAGNETIC
72

36

9
5

FIELD
27

36

9

 

 

ARTHUR C CLARKE' MYSTERIOUS WORLD

Simon Welfare & John Fairley

INTRODUCTION

by Arthur C Clarke

9

 

"Mysteries come in so many shapes and sizes that it is almost impossible to classify them. One useful way of doing so is to divide them into three categories, based on our current level of under- standing. Borrowing shamelessly, let us call them Mysteries of the First, Second and Third Kind.

A Mystery of the First Kind is something that was once utterly baffling, but is now completely understood. Virtually all nl1tural phenomena fall into this category; one of the most familiar, and beautiful, examples is the rainbow. To ancient man, thi~must have been an awe-inspiring, even terrifying sight. There was no way that he could explain it, except as the creation of some superior intelli-gence; witness the version in Genesis, when Jehovah tells Noah that he will set His sign in the heavens. . . .

The true explanation of the rainbow had to wait for Sir Isaac Newton's proof that 'white' light is really a blend of all possible colours, which may be separated by a prism - or by drops of water floating in the sky. After the publication of Newton's Optics in 1704, there was no further mystery about the rainbow - but all its magic and beauty remained. Some foolish people think that science takes the wonder out of the universe; the exact opposite is the truth. Genuine understanding is not only more useful than supersti- tion or myth; it is almost always much more interesting.

There are countless other Mysteries of the First Kind. Still more awe-inspiring than the rainbow is the aurora, and only since the dawn of the space age have we learned how that is created by electrified particles blasted out of the sun, and trapped in the upper atmosphere by the earth's magnetic field. Even now, there are still many details to be worked out; but there is no doubt about the general principles of the aurora.

Of course, as any philosopher will be glad to tell you, no 'expla-nation' of anything is ever complete; beyond every mystery is a deeper one. The dispersion of light in the spectrum causes the rainbow - but what is light itself? - and so on, indefinitely..."

Page 10

"Mysteries of the Second Kind are what this book, and the television series on which it is based, are all about. Theyy are mysteries which are still mysteries, though in some cases we may have a fairly good idea of the answers. Often the trouble is that there are too many answers; we would be quite satisfied with any one of them, but others appear equally valid. The mpst spectacular modern example is, of course the UFO phenomenon, where the range of explanations extends from psychic manifestations through atmospheric effects to visiting spaceships - and, to make matters even more complicated, the range of eager explainers runs from complete lunatics to hard-headed scientists. (There are some soft- headed scientists in this field as well.) All that I will say about the controversial subject of UFOlogy at this point is that, where there are so many answers, there is something wrong with the questions...."

"...Barring such exceptional bad luck, most Mysteries of the Second Kind are eventually solved, and graduate to those of the First Kind. In witnessing this process, our generation is the most fortu-nate one that has ever lived. We have discovered answers to ques-tions that have haunted all earlier ages - to questions, indeed, which once seemed beyond all possible solution. No more dramatic example could be mentioned than the Far Side of the Moon, once the very symbol of the unknowable. Now it has not only been completely mapped, but men have gazed upon its plains and craters with their own unaided eyes.

Yet there are some Mysteries that may remain forever of the Second Kind. This is particularly true where historical events are concerned, because once the evidence has been lost or destroyed, there is no way in which it can be recovered. One can conjecture endlessly about such famous enigmas as the true identities of Kaspar Hauser, or the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, or Homer.

Unless someone invents a method of looking into the past - extremely unlikely, yet not quite impossible - we may never know.

Scientists are more fortunate than historians, for Nature does not destroy evidence; all the questions they ask are ultimately / Page 11 / answered - though in the process they invariably uncover new and more difficult ones.Mysteries of the Third Kind are the rarest of all, and there is very. little that can be said about them; some sceptics argue that they do not even exist. They are phenomena - or events- for which there appears to be no rational explanation; in the cases where there are theories to account for them, these are even more fantastic than the 'facts'..."

"...A less appalling, though sometimes very frightening, Mystery of the Third Kind is the Poltergeist (from the German - literally, 'noisy spirit'). Although a healthy scepticism is required when dealing with all paranormal phenomena, because extraordinary happenings require extraordinarily high standards of verification, there is impressive evidence that small objects can be thrown around, or even materialized, with no apparent physical cause. Usually there is a disturbed adolescent somewhere in the back-ground, and although adolescents - disturbed or otherwise - are perfectly capable of raising hell by non-paranormal means, this persistent pattern over so many cultures, and such a long period of time, suggests that something strange is going on. If so, it is a complete mystery, and such labels as 'psychokinesis' are only fig-leaves to conceal our ignorance.

In this series, we have avoided M3Ks for several good and sufficient reasons. In the first case, there is no general agreement that they even exist, so discussions of their reality are inconclusive and unsatisfying. At best, the parties concerned agree to disagree; at worst, confrontations end up as slanging matches with charges of fraud or narrow-mindedness winging across the battle lines. This can be amusing for a while, but soon gets boring."

 

THE BIOLOGY OF DEATH

Lyall Watson

1974

Page175

"Unconscious poltergeist activities are usually limited to a fairly small area. The only really good quantitative study was made on phenomena surrounding a young shipping clerk in Miami. He / Page 176 / was tested in a large warehouse and the movements of nineteen objects in his vicinity were both watched and mea- sured. There was a definite pattern to the movements; with objects close to him travelling for short distances on a clockwise path with an outward component, and objects farther away moving longer distances in a counterclockwise direction towards the subject. The existence of this pattern, together with the fact that most movements started to the left and behind the young clerk, suggests that despite the random nature of the occurrences, they do follow a pattern which would be consistent with the existence of a physical force field.

"It is odd how often patterns can be found to fit the occurrence of otherwise unexplained phenomena, and interesting how often these patterns turn out to be based on magnetic fields. Navi-gation is bedevilled by the fact that the earth's magnetic field is riddled with local deviations and irregularities. These faults have been very carefully plotted and the most persistent of them have become quite notorious. One of these lies off the Bahama Islands, another in the English county of Sussex and a third near Prescott in Arizona. 143 Periodically, all hell breaks loose in one of these places and poltergeists start flinging things around, apparitions and unidentified flying objects appear, people and sometimes vehicles unaccountably disappear, mysterious fires break out and there may even be hysteria or a form of mass madness.210 There are thousands of these weak spots all over the planet and each of them occupies a precise geographical location, nearly always with a long history of demons, mon- sters and mayhem. To occultists, such places are 'gateways in the etheric envelope of earth through which beings from other realities seep into our lives'. To UFO cultists, they are 'windows in the sky through which vehicles fly from other space-time continuums'. To somewhat perplexed biologists like myself, they provide a fragile handhold on otherwise intangible phenomena.

Geologists, physicists and psychiatrists are now investigating these an.omalous areas and finding, more often than not, that the archaeologists have beaten them to it. Stonehenge, Delphi / Page177 / and Baalbek all lie slap in the middle of a 'window' area. And so too do Lourdes and Bethlehem. The Vatican in the Middle Ages ordered priests to build new churches wherever possible on the sites of old temples, because the tradition of sacred places is one that is deeply engraved and based largely on observations of abnonnal manifestations which may date back thousands of years. Careful examination of the local traditions show that they specify not only a particular place, but also a predictable time. The Bell Telephone Laboratories recently made a computer study of some of the unusual occurrences collected by the impish Charles Fort - and found that frogs fell from the sky most often on Wednesdays, but usually according to a cycle of 9.6 years. When cycles of this kind are plotted against cosmic events, they correspond precisely to interactions of solar and lunar influences producing unusually large fluctuations iri the earth's magnetic field, and placing additional strain on the existing faults in haunted places.

In December 1945, five TBM-3 Avenger torpedo bombers of the United States Navy took off from Florida and disappeared without trace somewhere off the Bahamas. A Martin Mariner PBM flying boat with survival equipment was sent out after them and that too vanished into thin air. In the last seventy years, more than a hundred ships and planes and over a thousand people have been swallowed up whole in this notorious area.254 Several attempts have been made to plot this hole in the sky and to correlate it with other black spots. The most complex is that made by Bruce Cathie, a captain flying for the National Airways of New Zealand.45 He believes that these points fall on the lines of a grid of rectangles each forty-five square nautical miles in area, set up on mathematical co-ordinates based on the harmonic relationships of gravity, the mass of earth and the speed of light. His mathematics has the strained quality of a numerologist trying desperately to prove a point at all costs, but the patterns he contrives do seem to coincide with the location even of things like earthquakes and volcanic activity. After working very carefully through his argument, I am still not certain what direct connection there is between gravity and de Gaulle, but Cathie was able to use his system to publicly / Page178 / predict the exact day and time of the explosion of the French nuclear device over Mururoa Island on 25 September 1968.

The most appealing aspect of Cathie's grid is his claim that it makes sense of all the apparently unrelated mass of sightings of unidentified flying objects. This is no longer a matter of concern only to the much-maligned lunatic fringe for a Gallup Poll taken in November 1973 shows that the majority of Americans, fifty-one per cent, now believe in the reality of so-called 'flying saucers'. 300 Eleven per cent, that is a possible twenty-five million people, claim to have actually seen a UFO of some kind. Marsh gas, car headlights, Venus and spots-in-front-of-the-eyes are no longer adequate explanations for a phenomenon of this magni- tude. There may be something in the theory now gaining ground that man migrated to Earth from some other planet, or was seeded here by some superior race or was actually produced by the union of that race with earthly animals. The discovery of old maps in library basements, metal cubes in blocks of coal, and perfect glass lenses in ancient quarries, all adds up to a body of evidence that is growing large enough to become a valid alterna-tive to the little pile of fossil fragments on which the evolutionary theory of man's development is based.

I do not think that there is going to be any simple answer to all these problems. No theory based only on Mount Ararat, or Atlantis, or a collision with Venus, can account for all the facts. I am impressed by the historical and archaeological evidence for a very old and highly developed civilisation, perhaps even contemporary with Neanderthal Man; but as a biologist I find it impossible to believe that we have no evolutionary link with the other animals around us. This is why I find something like Cathie's grid so appealing. It sets up a mechanism based only on earth's natural rhythms, that allows almost anything to happen. Given only that there are certain spots on our planet's face that house persistent energetic anomalies, we can easily come to terms with the idea that it is in these places that mutations will most often occur; or new ideas will be generated; or collective hallucinations will take place; or things will behave abnormally; or changes in physical state will be most simple; or visitors will leave or first appear.

 

 

I

SAID THE LIE WITH MY LITTLE EYE I SAW YOU DIE

 

THE BIOLOGY OF DEATH

Lyall Watson

1974

Page 49

"Life and death seem to be inseparable, but if it is true that both are distinct from the state that we have called goth, and if instruments can be produced to measure this difference, then the situation will be at least partly resolved. At the moment there are hundreds of incurable patients all over the world lingering on for months or even years in severe states of debilitation and depletion, seemingly alive simply because of mechanical or clinical intervention. I believe that organisms under these conditions, like cells in isolation, run down into anonymity and cease to exist as individuals or even as living units. Emotionally we know this to be true. One only has to see how those looking after helpless cases, despite great kindness and the best of intentions, end up treating them like machines that require tending. The response and the analogy are fair, because I believe (although it has never been measured) that the organisers of life in these goth individuals will prove to be either qualitatively different or at least attenuated to the point where they become quantitatively negligible.

As long ago as 1836, in a Manual of Medical Jurisprudence, this was said: 'Individuals who are apparently destroyed in a sudden manner, by certain wounds, diseases or even decapi- tation, are not really dead, but are only in conditions incompat- ible with the persistence of life. '231 This is an elegant and vital distinction. Death is not 'incompatible with the persistence of life'. Our ability to bring all kinds of death back to life is limited only by the state of our technology.  

 

 

 THE SEVENTH SCROLL

Wilber Smith

.

'Salaam aleikum, Doktari! Peace be with you, doctor.' They honoured all men of learning, but him especially for his kindness to them and their families over the years. Many of them had worked for his father before him. It mattered little that most of them were Moslem, while he was a Christian.

When they reached the villa, Alia, the old house- keeper, greeted them with mumbles and scowls. 'You are late. You are always late. Why do you not keep regular hours, like decent folk? We have a position to maintain.'

'Old mother, you are always right,' he teased her gently. 'What would we do without you to care for us?' He sent her away, still scowling to cover her love and concern for him. They ate the simple meal on the terrace together, dates and olives and unleavened bread and goat's milk / Page 2 / cheese. It was dark when they finished, but the desert stars were bright as candles.

'Royan, my flower.' He reached across the table and touched her hand. 'It is time to begin work.' He stood up from the table and led the way to his study that opened out on to the terrace.

Royan Al Simma went directly to the tall steel safe against the far wall and tumbled the combination. The safe was out of place in this room, amongst the old books and scrolls, amongst the ancient statues and artefacts and grave goods that were the collection of his lifetime.

When the heavy steel door swung open, Royan stood back for a moment. She always felt this prickle of awe whenever she first looked upon this relic of the ages," even after an interval of only a few short hours.

The seventh scroll,' she whispered, and steeled herself to touch it. It was nearly four thousand years old, written by a genius out of time with history, a man who had been dust for all these millennia, but whom she had come to know and respect as she did her own husband. His words were eternal, and they spoke to her clearly from beyond the grave, from the fields of paradise, from the presence of f the great trinity, Osiris and Isis and Horus, in whom he had believed so devoutly. As devoutly as she believed in another more recent Trinity.

She carried the scroll to the long table at which Duraid, her husband, was already at work. He looked up as she laid it on the tabletop before him, and for a moment she saw the same mystical mood in his eyes that had affected her. He always wanted the scroll there on the, table, even when there was no real call for it. He had the photographs and the microfilm to work with. It was as though he needed the unseen presence of the ancient author close to him as he studied the texts. "

 

 THREE ESSAYS

Thomas Mann

1932

111

AN EXPERIENCE IN THE OCCULT

Page 257

"That which governs life," Claude Bernard wrote, " is neither chemistry nor physics, nor anything of the kind; but the ideal principle of the life-process." A strangely indefinite saying for a great scientist, he being a French. man to boot; a saying that gropes vaguely after a mystery, and shows that it is precisely the great world of scholar-ship which never loses an inward feeling for the mystery; and that only the rank and file run the danger of scien-tific darkness, unmindful how very little complete, how much mingled with mystery - and riddles perhaps never- to-be-solved - is all their exact knowledge of nature and life and its functions. It is accepted as an established fact in the world of occultism today that the effective and form-ative principle at work in the psychological processes does in certain cases assume a "teleplastic " character: in other words, it passes beyond the limits of the organism and oper-ates outside it, " ectoplastically." That is, it calls into tem-porary existence, out of the exteriorized, organic basic substance (the appearance and form of which have already been observed with some degree of exactitude), shapes, limbs, bodily organs, particularly hands, which possess all the properties and functions of normal, physiological, bio- logically living organs. These teleplastic end-organs move apparently free in space, but so far as can be observed have a close physiological and psychological relation with the medium, in such a way that any impression received through the teleplasm has its effect upon the medial / Page 257 / vice versa. Here we see supra.normal physi-ology vying with the normal to bear witness to the unity of the organic substance. A fluid, in varying degrees of den-sity. leaves the body of the medium as an amorphous, un-organized mass takes form in various teleplastic organs, hands, feet, heads, and so on; and after a brief existence in this form during which, however, it displays all the attri-butes of living substance, dissolves and is reabsorbed into the medial organism. And this fluid, this substance, this sub-stratum of the various organic formations, is uniform, un-differentiated; there is not such a thing as a bone-substance as different from a muscular or visceral or nervous one; there is only one substance, the basis and substratum oforganic life.

Probably all reasoned thinking and talking in this highly speculative field of facts is today premature and can only seem to clarify without doing so. But one thing is cer-tain we shall be thinking and talking most inadequately about the phenomena of materialization, as about the rid-dle of life in general, if we regard them from the physical and material side alone, and not from the psychical as well. It was Hegel who said that the idea, the spirit, is the ultimate source of all phenomena; and perhaps supra-normal physiology is more apt than normal to demonstrate his statement.Yes, It undertakes to place the philosophic demonstration of the primacy of the idea, of the ideal ality, alongside the biological demonstration of the unity of all organic life.

Ouite uninstructed, and on my own responsibility, I ex / Page 259 / plained the telekinetic phenomena as the medium's magi-cally objectivated dreams. And the literature of the subject confirms my explanation; with an awe-inspiring display of technical terms, it explains that the idea of the phenomenon, present in the subconsciousness of the somnambulist, min-gled moreover with that of the other persons present, is by the aid of psychophysical energy " ectoplastically" moved, by a biopsychical projection, to a certain distance, and im-printed - that is to say, "objectivated." In other words, we call to aid an uninvestigated ideoplastic faculty pos-sessed by the medial constitution. Ideoplastic - a word, and a conception, of Platonic power and charm, not with-out flattering unction to the artist's ear, who will be ready from now on to characterize, not only his own work, but universal reality as ideoplastic phenomena. Yet a word, and a conception, of quite as turbid depths as the word " de-lusion" itself, and, by virtue of its maddening mixture of elements of the real and the dream, leading straight to the morbid and the preposterous.

Let me give in closing one single but striking example. We are repeatedly assured that the ideoplastic formations, for the time during which they are present, possess all the characteristics of actual life. When they have been in a good mood they have not only let themselves be seen and touched, and their objective reality established by photog- raphy and apparatus which registered their telekinetic ace tivities; but plaster casts have been made, hands of tran- scendental origin having been persuaded to dip themselves into basins of warm water with melted wax floating on top. / Page 260 / In this way a mould has been formed about the spirit member, and hardened by exposure to air. Out of such a mould no human hand could get free without breaking the mould. But the teleplastic organ frees itself by demateriali-zation, and the experimenters pour plaster of Paris into the wax glove and thus obtain a cast of the materialized organ, which should correspond to it in all particulars. It is to be noted that the casts thus obtained show no resemblance in shape or lines to the hands of the medium, or to those of anyone else present. Now at one of Willy's sittings the fol-lowing perfectly lunatic thing occurred (and not the only one of its kind). The medium being under the most careful control, a shape like a hand appeared, coming from above and behind, and showed itself above a piece of grey clay on the little table. It had a forearm, and was lighted by a rosy light, and it hovered about over the surface of the clay; on which, after the sitting, six flat impressions were found, on the previously smooth surface. But at the base of Willy's little finger on his left hand, and on the back of the fourth finger of the same hand, there were traces of clay.

Now I ask of nature and spirit, I inquire of reason and of logic on her throne: How, when, and from where came the clay on Willy's fingers?

No, I will not go to Herr von Schrenck-Notzing's again.

It leads to nothing, or at least to nothing good. I love that which I called the moral upper world, I love the human fable, and clear and humane thought. I abhor luxations of the brain, I abhor morasses of the spirit. Up to now, in-deed, I have seen but a few stray sparks from the infernal / Page 261 / fires - but that must suffice me. I should like of course to hold, as others have held, a hand like that, a metaphysical delusion made of flesh and blood, in mine. And perhaps there might appear to me, as it has to others, Minna's head, above the shoulder of the sleeping Willy: the head of a charming girl, Slavic in type, with lively black eyes. That, however uncanny, must be a wonderful experience. . . . After all, I will have another try or so with Herr von Schrenck-Notzing; two or three times, not more. That much could do me no harm; and I know myself, I am a man of ephemeral passions; I shall take care that it leads to nothing, and put the whole thing out of my mind for ever after. No, I will not go two or three times, I will only go once, just once more and then not again. I only want to see the handkerchief rise up into the red light before my eyes. For the sight has got into my blood somehow, I cannot for- get it. I should like once more to crane my neck, and with the nerves of my digestive apparatus all on edge with the fantasticality of it, once more, just once, see the impossible come to pass.

1923 "

 

YOU GET THE IDEA

 

 

 

 

THE LOST WORLDS OF 2001

Arthur C. Clarke

1972

 17

THE

QUESTION

Page 114

"The weeks of preflight checkout in orbit went smoothly - and uneventfully, as they were supposed to do. There was only one moment of drama and emotion: the christening of the ship.

Officially, most spacecraft have only. numbers. Unoffi-cially, they all have names, as ships have since the begin-ning of time. This one, the astronauts decided, would be called Discovery, after the most famous of polar-exploration ships. It seemed appropriate, for they were going into regions far colder than the South Pole, and the discovery of facts was the sole purpose of their mission.

But how does one christen a spaceship, in orbit two hundred miles above the earth? The traditional cham- pagne bottle was obviously out of the question, and the distinguished ladies who were expected to wield it would balk at carrying out the ceremony while floating around in spacesuits. Some kind of compromise was necessary.

Almost eighteen times a day, the ship passed directly above every point on the equator. The largest city beneath its path was Nairobi, and here, at night, the christening' took place.

The lights of the city were extinguished, and all eyes were turned to the sky, when the world's First Lady made a brief speech of dedication and, at the calculated mo- ment, said, "I christen you Discovery." 'Then, with all eyes upon her as she stood regal and resplendent in her tribal robes, the Secretary-General pressed a switch.

Directly overhead, a dazzling star burst into life-the billion-candlepower flare that was drenching both Space Station One and Discovery with its brilliance. It moved slowly from west to east while the whole world watched- / Page 115 / both from the ground, and through cameras on the st tion. The fastest vessel built by man had been cbristene by the swiftest of all entities, light itself.

Other much more important events in the program wer less publicized; and there was one that took place in complete secrecy.

Weeks ago, the final team selection had been made, an the twelve back-ups had swallowed their disappointmen It had been short-lived, for they knew that their tim would come; already they were looking ahead to th rescue mission-the Second Jupiter Expedition-which would require them all. Yet, even now, at this late m ment, there was a chance that some of them might leave with Discovery. . . .

The Space center's large and lavishly equipped operating room contained only three men, and one of those was not conscious of his surroundings. But the figure lying prone on the table was neither sleeping nor anesthetized for its eyes were open. They were staring blankly infinity, seeing nothing of the spotless white room and its two other occupants.

Lester Chapman, Project Manager of the Jupiter Mission, looked anxiously at the Chief Medical Officer.

"Are you ready?" he asked, his voice in an unnecessarily low whisper. ,

Dr. Giroux swept his eyes across the gauges of th electrohypnosis generator, felt the flaccid wrist of his su ject, and nodded his head. Chapman wet his lips an leaned over the table.

"David-do you hear me?"

"Yes." The answer was immediate, yet toneless and lacking all emotion.

"Do you recognize my voice?"

"1 do. You are Lester Chapman."

"Good. Now listen very carefully. I am going to as you a question, and you will answer it. Then: you will forget both the question and the ans:wer. Do you unde stand'

Again that dead, zombie-like reply.

"I understand. I will answer your question. Then I will forget it."

Chapman paused, stalling for time. So much depended on this-not millions, but billions of dollars-that he was almost afraid to continue. This was the final, test, known / Page 116 / only to a handful of men. Least of all was it known to the astronauts, for its usefulness would be totally destroyed if they were aware of it.

"Go on," said Giroux encouragingly, making a minute adjustment to the controls of the generator.

"This is the question, David. You have completed your training. In a few hours you go aboard the ship for the trial countdown. But there is still time to change your mind.

"You know the risks. You know that you will be gone from Earth for at least five years. You know that you may never comeback.

"If you have any mental reservations-any fears which you cannot handle-you can withdraw now. No one will ever know the reason. We will have a medical cover story to protect you. Think carefully. Do you really want to go?"

The silence in the operating room stretched on and on. What thoughts, wondered Chapman with desperatr anx-iety, were forming in that brain hovering on the borders of sleep, in the no man's land of hypnosIs? Bowmans training had cost a fortune, and though he could be replaced even now by either of his back-ups, such a move would be certain to create emotional strains and distur- bances. It would be a bad start to the mission.

And, of course, there was even the remote possibility that both back-ups would take the same escape route. But that was something that did not bear thinking about. . . .

At last Bowman spoke. For the first time there seemed a trace of emotion in his voice, as if he had long ago made up his mind, and would not be deflected or diverted by any external force.

And so, each after his fashion, presently answered

Whitehead and Poole and Kimball and Hunter and Kamin- ski. And not one of them ever knew that he had been asked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOW MANY TIMES SHALL

I

FORGIVE MY BROTHER , MY SISTER

I

TELL THEE NOT SEVEN TIMES ONLY

 

 

THE

SEVENTH SCROLL

Wilbur Smith

1995

Page 247

The next morning Nicholas and Royan were both up and drinking coffee at the campfire while it was still dark. Aly and his men were squatting at their own fire near by, talking quietly and coughing over the first cigarettes of the day. The project seemed to have caught their imagination. They had no inkling of the reason for this second descent into the chasm, but the enthusiasm of the two ferengi was infectious.

As soon as it was light enough to see the path, Nicholas led them back up into the hills. The men chatted cheerfully amongst themselves in Amharic as they hurried through the thorn scrub, and they came out on the rim rock just as the sun broke out over the eastern escarpment of the valley. Nicholas had drilled the men the previous day, and he and Royan had sat half the night going over the plans, so -each of them knew their part and they lost little time in setting themselves up for the descent.

Nicholas had stripped to shorts and tennis shoes, but this time he had brought along an old Barbarians rugby jersey for warmth. While he pulled this over his head he pointed out to Royan the platform that had been dug out from the solid rock.

She examined it carefully. 'It's very hard to be sure, but I think you are right. This probably is man-made.'

'When you get further down you will have no doubts. There is very little weathering of the face under the overhang, and the niches are almost perfectly preserved - until they reach the high-water mark, that is,' he told her, as he took his seat in the sling and swung out over the cliff. Dangling from the end of the gantry he gave Aly the sign, and the men lowered him down into the gorge. The rope ran smoothly through. the lubricated slot.

He-saw at once that he had judged it correctly, and that he was descending in line with the double row of niches. He came level with the enigmatic circle on the cliff face, but it was fifty feet from him, and a growth of gaudy- / Page 248 / co loured lichens had streaked and disco loured the rock, partially obscuring the details, so that he still could not be certain that it was not a natural flaw. He passed it and went on down as Aly and his team paid out the rope from above.

When he reached the surface of the water he slipped out of the sling and dropped in. The water was very cold. He trod water, gasping, until his body became acclimatized. Then he gave Aly three tugs on the signal rope. While the canv:ts seat was hauled up he swam to the side of the pool and held on to one of the carved stone niches for support. He had forgotten how gloomy and cold and lonely it was here in the bottom of the chasm.

After a long delay he craned his head backwards and watched Royan come into sight around the bulge of the overhang, dangling in the sling seat and revolving slowly at the end of the nylon rope. She looked down and waved at him cheerfully.

'Full marks to that girl,' he grinned. 'Not much puts the wind up her.' He wanted to shout encouragement, but he knew it was futile because the thunder of the falls smothered all other sound. So he contented himself with returning her wave.

Halfway down he saw her tugging frantically on the signal rope. Aly had been warned to expect this, and her descent was halted immediately. Then she leaned back in the sling, hanging on with only her left hand, as she groped for Nicholas's binoculars which hung from their strap on to her chest. She was twisted at an awkward angle as she held the glasses to her eyes and tried to manipulate the focus wheel with one hand. He saw that she was obviously having difficulty picking up the round mark on the wall and keeping it in the field of the lens, for the sling was swinging from side to side and at the same time revolving slowly.

he struggled at the end of the rope for what seemed / Page 249 / to Nicholas a very long time, but probably was no more than a few minutes. Then abruptly she dropped the binoculars on to her chest, threw back her head and let out a scream that, despite the roar of falling water, carried clearly to Nicholas a hundred feet beneath her. She was kicking her legs joyfully and waving her free hand at him, wild with excitement, as Aly began paying out the rope once more. Still screaming incoherently, she was looking down at him with a face that seemed to light up the cathedral gloom of the gorge.

'I can't hear you,' he yelled back, but the falls defeated both their efforts to communicate.

Royan was wriggling about in her seat, shouting and gesticulating wildly, and now she let go the harness with her other hand and leaned further out to keep him in sight as the sling revolved. She was still twenty feet above the water when she almost lost her balance entirely, and very nearly toppled backwards out of the sling.

'Careful there,' he yelled up at her. 'Those glasses are Zeiss. Two thousand quid at the Zurich duty-free!'

This time his voice must have carried, for she stuck her tongue out at him in a schoolgirlish gesture. But her movements became more circumspect. When her feet were almost touching the water she signalled on the rope to stop her descent and hung there, fifty feet across the pool from him.

'What did you find?' he shouted across.

'You were right, you wonderful man!'

'Is it man-made? Is it an inscription? Could you read it?'

'Yes, yes and yes to all three of your questions!' She grinned triumphantly as she teased him.

'Dori't be infuriating. Tell me.'

'Taita's ego got the better of him once again. He couldn't resist signing his work.' She laughed. 'He has left

us his autograph - the hawk with a broken wing!'

/ Page 250 / 'Marvellous! Plain bloody marvellous!' he exalted.

'Proof that Taita was here, Nicky. To carve that cartouche, he must have been standing on a scaffolding. Our first guess was right. That niche you are holding on to is part of his ladder to the bottom of the gorge.'

'Yes, but why, Royan?' he yelled back at her. 'Why was Taita down here? There is no evidence of any excavation or building work.'

They both looked around the gloomy cavern. Apart from the tiny rows of niches, the walls were unbroken, smooth and inscrutable until they plunged into the dark water.

'Under the falls?' she shouted across. 'Is there a cutback in the rock? Can you get across there?'

He pushed off from the cliff, and swam towards the thundering chute of water. Halfway across, the current caught him and he had to swim with all his strength to make any headway against it. Thrashing the water with flailing arms and kicking out strongly, he managed to reach a spur of polished, algae-slick rock at the nearest end of the falls.

The water crashed over his head, but he edged his way along under the rock step into the heart of the cascade. Halfway across, the water overwhelmed him. It tore him off his precarious perch, hurled him back into the basin below and swirled him end over end. He surfaced in the middle of the pool, and once again had to swim with all his strength to break free of the grip of the current and to reach the slack water below the wall again. He clung to his handhold in the stone niche, and panted like a bellows.

'Nothing?' she called.

He shook his head, unable to answer until he had finally regained his breath. Finally he managed: 'Nothing. It's a solid rock wall behind the falls.' He gasped another breath, and then invited sarcastically, 'Next bright idea, madam?'

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She was silent and he was glad of the respite. Then she called again, 'Nicky, how far do those niches go down?' .

'You can see,' he told her, 'right to the one I am holding on to.'

'What about below the surface?'

'Don't be silly, woman.' He was getting cold and irritable. 'How the hell could there be cuttings below the surface?'

'Try!' she yelled almost as irritably. He shook his head pityingly, and drew a deep breath. Still clinging to his handhold, he extended his limbs and body to their full stretch. Then his head went under the dark surface as he groped down as far as he could reach with his toes.

Suddenly he shot back, snorting for air with a startled look on his face. 'By Jove!' he shouted. 'You are right! There is another niche down there!'

'I hate to say I told you so.' Even at that range he could see the smug expression on her face.

'What are you? Some kind of witch?' Then he broke off and rolled his eyes heavenward in despair. 'I know what you are going to ask me to do next.'

'How far do the niches go down?' she called in honeyed tones. 'Will you dive down for me, dear Nicky?'

'That's it,' he said. 'I knew it. I am going to speak to my shop steward. This is slave labour. From now onwards I am on strike.'

'Please, Nicky!'

He hung in the water, pumping air in and out of his lungs, hyper-ventilating, flushing his bloodstream with oxygen to increase his underwater endurance to its limits. In the end he expelled the contents of his lungs completely, squeezing out the last breath until his chest ached with the effort, and then he sucked in again, filling his lungs to their capacity with fresh air. Finally, with his chest fully expanded, he duck-dived, standing on his head with his / Page 252 / legs high out of the water and letting their weight drive him under.

Sliding head-first down the submerged wall, he reached down, groping for the next niche below the surface. He found it, and used it to accelerate his dive. pulling himself on downwards.

He found the second niche below that, and pulled himself on downwards. The niches were about six feet apan - a nautical fathom. Using them as a measure, he was able to calculate his progress accurately.

Swimming on downwards, he found another niche, then another. Four rows of niches, twenty-four feet below the surface. His ears were popping and squeaking as the pressure squeezed the air out of his Eustachian tubes.

He kept on downwards and found the fifth row of niches. Now the air in his lungs was compressing to almost half its surface volume, and as his buoyancy decreased so his descent became easier and more rapid.

His eyes were wide open, but the waters below him were dark and turbid. He could make out only the surface of the wall directly in front of his face. He saw the sixth niche appear ahead of him and he grasped it, then hesitated.

'Thirty-six feet of depth already, and no sign yet of bottom,' he thought. There had been a time, when he was spearfishing competitively with the army team, that he could free-dive to sixty feet and stay at that depth for a full minute. But he had been younger then and in peak physical condition.

'Just one more niche,' he promised himself, 'and then back up to the surface.' His chest was beginning to throb and bum with the need to breathe, but he pulled hard on his handhold and shot down. He saw the vague shape of the seventh niche appear out of the murk below him.

'They go right to the bottom,' he realized with amaze- ment. 'How on earth did Taita do it? They had no diving / Page 253 / equipment.' He grasped the niche and hovered there for a moment, undecided if he should risk going further. He knew he was almost at his physical limit. Already he was hunting for air, his chest beginning to convulse involuntarily.

'What about one more for the hell of it!' He was beginning to feel light-headed, and a strange glow of euphoria came over him. He recognized the danger signs, and looked down at his own body. Through the murk he saw that his skin was wrinkled and folded by the pressure of water. There were over two atmospheres' weight bearing down upon him, crushing in his chest. His brain was becoming starved of oxygen, and he felt reckless and invulnerable.

'Once more into the breach, dear friends,' he thought drunkenly, and went on down.

'Number eight, and the doctor's at the gate.' He felt the eighth niche under his fingers. He was thinking in gibberish now: 'Number eight, and I'll have her on a plate.'

He turned to go up again, and his feet touched bottom. 'Fifty feet deep,' he realized even through his fuddled state. 'I have left it too late. Got to get back. Got to breathe.'

He was bracing himself to push off from the bottom when something grabbed his legs and dragged him hard against the rock wall.

'Octopus!' he thought, remembering the line from Taita's stele, 'Her vagina is an octopus that has swallowed up a king.'

He tried to kick out, but his legs were bound as if by the arms of a sea monster; some cold, insidious embrace held him captive. 'Taita's octopus. My oath! He meant it literally. It's got me.'

He was pinned against the wall, crushed, helpless. Terror seized him, and the rush of it through his blood flushed away the hallucinations of his oxygen-impoverished brain. He realized what had happened to him.

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'No octopus. This is water pressure.' He had experi-enced the same phenomenon once before. On an army training exercise, while diving near the inlet to the turbines of the generators in Loch Arran, his buddy diver who was roped to him had drifted into their terrible suction. His companion had been sucked against the grille of the intake and his body had been crushed so that the splinters of his ribs had been driven through the flesh of his chest and had come out through the black neoprene rubber of his suit like daggers.

Nicholas had narrowly escaped the same fate. The fact that he was a few feet to one side of his buddy had meant that he escaped the full brunt of the rush of water into the turbine intake. Nevertheless, one of his legs was broken, and it had taken the strength of two other army divers to prise him out of the grip of the current.

This time he was at the limit of his air, and there was no other diver to assist him. He was being sucked into a narrow opening in the rock, the mouth of an underwater tunnel, a subaqueous shaft that bored into the rock wall.

His upper body was free of the baleful influence of the rushing flood, but his legs were being drawn inexorably into it. He was aware that the surrounds of the opening Were sharply demarcated, as straight and as square as a lintel hewn by a mason. He was being dragged over and around this lintel. Spreading out his arms, he resisted with all his strength, but his hooked fingers slid over the polished, slimy surface of the rock.

'This is the big one,' he thought. 'This is the one punch that you can't duck.' He hooked his fingers, and felt his nails tear and break as they rasped against the rock. Then suddenly they locked into the last niche in the wall above the sink-hole which was sucking him under.

Now at least he had an anchor point. With both hands he clung to the niche, and fought the pull of the water. He fought it with all his remaining strength and all his heart, / Page 255 / but he was near the end of his store of both. He strained until he felt the muscles in both arms popping, until the sinews in his neck stood out in steely cords and he felt something in his head must burst. But he had halted the insidious slide of his body into the sink.hole.

'One more,' he thought. 'Just one more try.' And he knew that was all he had left within him. His air was all used up, and so were his courage and his resolve. His mind swirled, and dark shapes clouded his vision.

From somewhere deep inside himself he drew out the last reserves, and pulled until the darkness in his head exploded in sheets of bright colours, shooting stars and Catherine wheels that dazzled him. But he kept on pulling. He felt his legs coming out of it, the grip of the V/aters weakening, and he pulled once more with strength that he had never realized he possessed.

Then suddenly he was ftee and shooting towards the surface, but it was too late. The darkness filled his head and in his ears was a sound like the roaring of the waterfall in the abyss. He was drowning. He was all used up. He had no knowledge of where he was, how much further he had to go to the surface, but he knew only that he was not going to make it. He was finished.

When he came out through the surface, he did not know that he had done so, and he did not have enough strength left to lift his face out of the water and to breathe. He wallowed there like a waterlogged carcass., face down and dying. Then he felt Royan's fingers lock into the hair in the back of his head, and the cold air on his face as she lifted it clear.

'Nicky!' she screamed at him. 'Breathe, Nicky, breathe!'

He opened his mouth and let out a spray of water and saliva and stale air; and then gagged and gasped.

'You're still alive! Oh, thank God. You were down for so long. I thought you had drowned.'

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As he coughed and fought for air and his senses returned, he realized in a vague way that she must have dropped out of the sling seat and come to his aid.

'You were under for so long. I could not believe it.' She held his head up, clinging with her free hand to the niche in the wall. 'You are going to be all right now. I have got you. Just take it easy for a while. It's going to be all right.'

It was amazing how much her voice encouraged him. The air tasted good and sweet and he felt his strength slowly returning.

'We have to get you up,' she told him. 'A few minutes more to get yourself together, and then I will help you into the sling.'

She swam with him across to the dangling sling and signalled to the men at the top of the cliff to lower it into the water. Then she held the folds of canvas open so that he could slip his legs into them.

'Are you all right, Nicky?' she demanded anxiously. 'Hang on until you get to the top.' She placed his hands on the side ropes of the harness. 'Hold tight!'

'Can't leave you down here,' he blurted groggily.

'I'll be fine,' she assured him. 'Just have Aly send the seat down again for me.'

When he was halfway up he looked down and saw her head bobbing in the dark waters. She looked very small and lonely, and her face pale and pathetic.

'Guts!' His voice was so weak and hoarse that he did not recognize it. 'You've got real guts.' But already he was too high for the words to carry down to her.

Once they had got Royan safely up out of the ravine, Nicholas ordered Aly to dismantle the gantry and hide the sections in the thorn scrub. From the helicopter it would be highly visible and he did not wish to stir Jake Helm's curiosity.